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  • Good Morning, John. They say that you can't judge a book by it's cover but

  • I say you can't not judge a book by its cover.

  • That's what the cover is for! There's a reason that this book, and this book, and this book all look kind of identical.

  • Like take a real fast look -

  • Fantasy novels, right?

  • You can tell 'cause there's like chiseled words over high contrast illustrations and all the fonts have serifs.

  • Oh my gosh look at baby Neil Gaiman! He's so cu-

  • Boom!

  • That looked different but very similar, but it's sans serif font so it's sci-fi.

  • That's the difference!

  • So for obvious reasons I've been thinking a lot about book covers lately.

  • And I want to share with you today the cover of my book,

  • An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, it's available September 25th and you can get it for pre-order now.

  • But first I'd like to give, like, a deeply subjective and incomplete list of some of the best book covers from the last 10 or 15 years.

  • Let's start here, with a book that came out in 1986, but I promise it's going to make sense in a second.

  • This is Watchmen.

  • If you've read the comic, you know what this image is, if you haven't then you probably don't, and I like that a lot about it.

  • It's mysterious, but it's bold and eye-catching

  • So bright!

  • And I like the bold, very sort of logo design alternate title placement.

  • I mean obviously iconic, one of the most iconic covers ever,

  • but it's not really one of the things on my list.

  • This Is! This is It Devours by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor,

  • and when I first saw it I thought of the cover of Watchmen. Obviously the color, but also the really sort of

  • bold comic-y font. I love this image. I love that there's a lot of like radial, interesting things

  • happening in covers right now.

  • Here's another really good interesting, radially-designed thing. And I also like that, in this case, the title kind of becomes the cover rather than

  • there having to be some external design element.

  • Now maybe this is going to be a little bit surprising.

  • I don't generally tend to like photographic covers but the pale, white arms and this bright

  • red centerpiece of this like lovely pure thing that you really,

  • is the kind of thing that you'd like to take a bite out of.

  • The color scheme here, um, obviously was imitated a lot.

  • And I also really like the tinyness of the title, like the insignificance of the title and the author name.

  • That's a bold choice and, and, like, maybe you didn't expect to see "Twilight" today but there it is.

  • Let's go more recent: "Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda". I like this book cover so much.

  • Again, bold color choices, something I'm a huge fan of.

  • There was a trend for a long time in young adult fiction to chop people's heads off

  • and I think the idea was like, give people looking at the cover something to relate to, but not too much.

  • This does that in a really interesting way and also it is reminiscent of, or evolves on,

  • a similar sort of cloud-based handwritten font thing.

  • Which leads me to, one of the be—, like I might be a little bit biased here, but one of the best covers from the last ten years.

  • This was such a departure.

  • When Rodrigo Corral made this for "The Fault in Our Stars" I feel like it really leveled-up young adult literature.

  • It feels kind of almost branded.

  • And I think that it started off, or was part of a really important and necessary trend in cover design.

  • My second-to-last cover: V. E. Schwab's "A Darker Shade of Magic".

  • Again, really interesting, thoughtful color choice happening here.

  • This cover to me feels, kind of, full of institutional knowledge,

  • like it knows a great deal about the book that I don't know yet.

  • I like that about it.

  • And finally, the last thing on my list...

  • Bam ba da ba ba ba ba ba ba ba!

  • ...is the cover of my book!

  • I realize that I'm biased but that's ok. I think I have the cutest cat in the world too.

  • And it's not like I designed it. I had minimal input.

  • It was a very scary process, and I'm so happy that I'm happy with what happened.

  • To me this font feels very, like, pulp. It feels adventure, it feels comic.

  • But then in the background here it feels like you're getting drawn into something

  • that's a little bit mysterious, a little bit creepy, which is exactly what I wanted.

  • Like it feels a little bit ostentatious in its color choice which, if you know the main character of the book,

  • which none of you do yet, that makes a lot of sense.

  • April is a graphic designer herself, the main character in the book, and she's very into color choice.

  • But I think that she'd be into how it kind of stands on its own as a design

  • and a little bit of, you know, an identity for the book.

  • All of the English language publishers really like this so it's gonna be the same cover in the U.K., in Canada, in Australia.

  • My book has a cover!

  • John, I'll see you on Tuesday.

Good Morning, John. They say that you can't judge a book by it's cover but

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