Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

We all know the saying, “don’t judge a book by its cover.” But can any of us actually say that we don’t succumb to creative cover designs? So let’s just admit that the covers matter a little bit. Have you noticed a change in cover aesthetics over the years? Let’s look at mysteries and thrillers, for example.

The Judas Cat by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Take author Dorothy Salisbury Davis. Her books, including The Judas Cat published in 1951, have been covered and recovered to make them appealing to a new generation of readers.Just like the move from the grandfather clock to the digital display, cover artwork has been modernized and simplified. If we look at Davis’s covers we can see that they’ve transformed—the cover designs have become simpler, cleaner, and much more colorful. In the past, mystery and thriller covers featured ominous and unsaturated tones. Now, they are bold and bright, perhaps to compete on the shelf next to their romantic cousins.

“The brightness of these covers has mostly to do with ebook versus print. Subtle gradations of dark colors work great on a bookshelf, when you can hold a book two inches from your face to see the detail, but on an e-tailer site we only have one inch of real estate to get the reader’s attention, and we are working with a white background, not a bookshelf. To best utilize an e-tailer site, we have to show off the covers using a lot of contrast, limited use of white (so the cover does not blend into the background), and bold type.” —Open Road Media Art Director Andrea Worthington Looking from cover to cover, from generation to generation, it is fascinating to notice the symbols and aesthetics that have lasted—like the black cat, which remains a symbol of dark mystery, and the silhouetted figure, which still serves as a haunting presence.

 

 An older cover of The Judas Cat by Dorothy Salisbury Davis.

 

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