Visual Diary: I Heart Book Design Con't

Hello all! Hope you had a nice weekend. Sorry for the delay in posts this week, I've been struck by a horrible cold and have been out of commission until now. Today I thought I would continue with last Thursday’s theme of book design, and post some of the covers I designed while working at Houghton Mifflin Company.

I thought it would be interesting to compare and contrast the covers I'm inspired by with the covers that I create. Here I've shown just a few of my most favorite designs. A very small collection, considering in my four years, I designed a total of over 420 covers. But even among these few, you can identify my love of silhouettes, strong graphics and bold typographical treatments.

In general, I had complete creative license when designing these covers. Occasionally there would be an image request, or a color change, but overall by the time the project hit my desk, the creative elements were left to me. For a designer, it was a pretty ideal situation.

I think the most challenging aspect of the job was to create a textbook cover that was both visually appealing and stimulating enough to get a student to WANT to open the book. I approached each cover with the question, "If I were a college student and I was totally procrastinating, what combination of type and image would get me to open the thing." And that is how I went about designing these covers. I can only hope it was successful in the end. What do you think? Do you find these covers interesting? Do you want to open at least one? And if so, which one? I would love to hear your thoughts!

{All published covers © Houghton Mifflin Company}