I’d be really happy if people couldn’t tell I’d done a book.” “I’m trying to make each book stand out on its own, so it doesn’t look anything else. It was the first time I really thought I want it to represent what’s inside rather than it just be some kind of statement.” The influence of Gray’s hand-drawn font is still seen on covers today – though he tries never to repeat himself. “That set me on the path of doing what I do in terms of trying to get books to look like individual objects. One of Gray’s early and most successful designs was for 2002’s Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. But what we don’t ever want to do is produce covers that are bland.” Or it might be that everyone is talking about it.

It might be that not everyone loves the cover. But what makes a great cover? “For us, it’s one that elicits a response of some sort. “I think people are really appreciating it as a form again, and designers have massively upped their game,” says Payne. In response to the coronavirus crisis and lockdown, the New York Public Library has even asked people to recreate their favourite book covers.Īll this means cover design is more important than ever. And a medium that is all about visuals the more photogenic a book is, the more likely you are to see it all over your feed. Search #bookstagram on Instagram and you’ll find more than 43 million images of books – next to cups of coffee, lying on crisp duvet covers, perched on the edge of sun loungers and in artfully haphazard stacks. Bookshops also became spaces to spend time in, not just to shop, with books presented as objects of desire on curated table and window displays.Īlongside this – perhaps even because of it – people increasingly started posting pictures of books on social media. There was embossing, foil, cloth bindings and elaborate end papers. Fonts got bolder, colours brighter, paper more tactile. But publishers fought back, making books that were more beautiful to look at and to hold than ever before. The emergence of ebooks posed a threat to physical books a decade or so ago.

Women talking book cover