The Art of Visual Storytelling │ all time favourite book covers (& some pretty bookstagrams)
- Christina Hitchmough
- Mar 7, 2021
- 3 min read
Lorinda Mamo once said, “Every great design begins with an even better story”. Wise words from a fellow graphic designer. The contrary, however is also true. “Every great story begins with an even better design”. I may be biased, but for me, the cover makes the novel. It’s the first impression you get from a book, and not only is it a marketing strategy in and of itself, but it’s an artwork no different from the likes of Magritte or Caravaggio. The very foundation and concept of art is to tell a story, and the cover design for a book is doing exactly that.
The Luminaries
This 2013 novel is now a TV miniseries (released in May 2020).
The Deathless Girls
You may have seen this illustrative border style before in 'The Familiars' by Stacey Halls, 'The Glass Woman' by Caroline Lea or 'The Binding' by Bridget Collins. It has become rather popular for fantasy fiction covers in recent years, although I picked this one out specifically for the beautiful autumnal colours.
The Priory of the Orange Tree
@alittlebiblio's bookstagram makes this cover even more impressive... although looking at all those pages is quite intimidating!
Wilder Girls
This style of art is similar to the work of Marcelo Monreal, a Brazilian digital pop culture artist known for deconstructing the faces of famous figures and combining their anatomy with nature. The Wilder Girls cover mimics this and illustrates its story perfectly; a disease called 'the Tox' has spread throughout Raxter School for Girls, which hijacks ones body, causing parts to fall off and be replaced with other things bursting out of them. The cover illustration is perhaps a beautified version of this, but is still horrifyingly captivating.
Song of Sorrow
Sometimes, just simplicity and colour is all you need.
Wild Embers
Not only is Nikita Gill one of my favourite poets, the covers of her poetry collections are also among my favourites. This one fits perfectly with the "classic" modern poetry cover: illustrative, all lower case, plenty of space and wide margins. This trend is something that I as a cover designer, must make use of to correctly market my client's work. Fitting into the current market goes for any genre of book, but it's very difficult to also make it unique.
Shadow of the Wind
A classic but not quite. This composition is almost surrealist in its style, which happens to be one of my favourite art movements.
Little Women
There are so many editions of Little Women that I've lost count of how many different covers I've seen - most of which are very beautiful. This Vintage Classics one though, well, looks so vintage, which I believe is the perfect style for the story. Each portrait of the March sisters has her own signature motif - Jo's quill and ink and Amy's paintbrush.
A Thousand Pieces of You / Ten Thousand Skies Above You / A Million Worlds With You
This. Trilogy. Is. Phenomenal. It's one of those series that has you forgetting you have a life and at the end of it, you hit a reading slump because nothing else compares. And those covers! You know it's an amazing cover when it looks beautiful in all languages.
Harry Potter (20th anniversary German edition)
By far the best of all the Harry Potter covers, dare I say it. This German artist has made these timeless adventures into true classics with these covers. Considering Rowling initially wrote this series for children, I believe the character illustrations (although based on the film actors), are a felicitous nod to the original books 20 years on.
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