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(Another tagline: the literaryBlack Panther.)
Its clearly being positioned by publishers and booksellers as a cultural icon, with a blazing cover to match.
If books have design eras, were in an age of statement wallpaper and fatty text.
We have the internet to thank and not just the interface but the economy thats evolved around it.
From the leather-bound volumes of old to lurid mass-market paperbacks, book covers were never designed in a vacuum.
Since the beginning of print, covers have reflected the aesthetics, and the technologies, of their day.
And then came the web.
Todays market pressures extend far beyond decreasing the viewable size of the product.
People are taking a lot fewer risks than they used to, says Kulick.
They opt for designs they know will work.
Hence, our current trend.
Its also never been harder to know exactly whatdoeswork in book marketing.
Amazon, for example, only shares titles daily sales numbers a crude metric at best.
(Its expansion into physical retail is widely regarded as just another data-collection tool.)
And where do we go for publicity in this age of tech disruption?
Books that are designed to render well on digital screens also look great on social.
Consider a fairly recent Instagram success.
Inevitably, customers are as likely to photograph the shelves as they are to read whats on them.
Who could resist capturing this curated, analog utopia?
Confusing as that loop may be, its an apt summation of this moment in design.
We have to see to it what we make works equally well in both options, she says.
In fact, we might now be in the second wave of internet-forward book design.
This years patterns are more pictorial than the simple geometries of, say, R.O.
KwonsThe Incendiariesor Meg WolitzersThe Female Persuasion.
The letters inBangkok Wakes to Rainare overlapped by the stylized drips falling across the covers forested background.
These details feel like rewards for those committed to reading on paper; Easter eggs hidden throughout the bookstore.
it’s possible for you to have your eye candy and read it, too.
