Really struggling to work out where I'm going with this today.
Title: ‘Judging Books By Their Covers: An Investigation Into The Influence of Book Cover Design’.
Abstract:
The aim of this report is to research how important book covers are and how much the design encourages sales. Book cover designs often reflect the fashions and trends at the time of their publication and by tracking one single book, it is hoped that the trends and styles of their era will be identified. To do this fairly and successfully it is important that it is a book that has been re-published numerous times, and by only one publishing house. This will ensure that the book covers only reflect the changing trends rather than different publishers’ unique styles.The book that will be analysed is *.
Within the report the issue of stereotypical cover design will be examined to see how and why particular colours and typefaces become representative of a genre. For example the use of pastel colours and italic typefaces on a romance/chick-lit cover. It is also interesting to look at why certain authors and illustrators collaborate and how a successful partnership creates a sort of brand. There are a couple of questions to consider, such as
‘Do the illustrations on the cover draw you to the book more than the author’s name?’
‘Can the two people within a successful author-illustration partnership ever entirely separate themselves from each other, or are they always going to be seen as one?’
A couple of such partnerships/collaborations that might prove interesting are Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake, and Jacqueline Wilson and Nick Sharatt.
The authors and illustrators are recognisable as a pair, so what happens if/ when Wilson’s books are illustrated by someone else? Will anyone know that the books are still being written by the same person?
Chapter Headings:
My report will be written in a series of chapters, these chapter headings are listed below.
1) History of Book Cover Design
This chapter will consist of a brief and concise history of the design of book covers. There will be some references to ‘Penguin A Cover Story’ as this provides a lot of information as to how the design of book covers grew in importance and how it was affected by social and economic factors. There will be some visual examples of how much the designs have altered over the past 70 years. Some data will also be included to show how important a good book cover is and to justify the expense of designing them.
2) The Influence of Book Covers and Author-Illustrator Collaborations.
Exploration of a variety of book covers over the years and the use of data to explain how the cover affected book sales.
Discussion about author-illustrator partnerships, and how such collaborations tie the two professions together, is this always a positive outcome or does it put them in a box?
The Guardian Newspaper interviewed Quentin Blake in 2007 and this extract will be fine tuned and included in the section about collaborations
‘Was there a danger that he might become so synonymous with Dahl that he could illustrate for nobody else? "Apparently not. I've worked with lots of writers - Russell Hoban, Joan Aiken, Michael Rosen. I find I do little shifts, not just between writers, but between books by the same writer, to give each work its identity."’ Taken from http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/sep/28/art.booksforchildrenandteenagers
3) Book Covers Now: content genre = cover genre
It is interesting to see how much the genre of the content influences the design of the cover. Are such stereotypical covers designed because they are the most appropriate of because they need to fit in with the same genre on the bookshelves. There will be some experiments with mixing up book covers to juxtapose their content. I.e a horror-style cover for a romance book. Would it stand out on the shelves so much that it will be chosen over the others, or will it stand out so much that the consumer will make assumptions that it does not belong to the romance genre and therefore ignore it. Is it best from a sales perspective to make a book stand out from the others or to merge in?
4) Designing the Perfect Book Cover
This chapter will be working towards a conclusion for the entire report. It will recap and re evaluate the information unearthed and discussed in previous chapters. Hopefully it will bring together or the information, positive and negative and this will result in a conclusion of what makes a good book cover and how it can be achieved. It is important to consider the factors from an aesthetic, informative and buy-ability aspect.
Action Plan:
Contact Sophia at Dorling Kindersley for information and attempt to secure and interview.
Talk to a book-seller, to discover how they can identify the genre of the book by the cover.
Take a trip to a large bookshop to see how books are displayed, which ones stand out most and which are successful/unsuccessful.
Draw a product graph to see if and where there is a gap in the market for a particular style of book cover. If so, why?
Contact a successful illustrator eg Nick Sharatt and ask him his opinions on his work with Jacqueline Wilson, has this been a negative effect in relation to his future projects? Does he feel pigeon-holed? Does he think he will always be trapped as her illustrator?
Visit the exhibition ‘Snozzcumbers and Frobscottle! The Wonderful World of Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake’ at the V&A museum of childhood.
Research and use statistics abut book sales and design such as the information at http://www.parapublishing.com/sites/para/resources/statistics.cfm
Bibliography:
Websites:
Wikipedia
http://www.flickr.com/photos/memake/3308996062/
http://top7business.com/?id=1631
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/04/14/excellent-book-covers-and-paperbacks/
http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/childrens/jacquelinewilson/home.htm
http://www.parapublishing.com/sites/para/resources/statistics.cfm
Blogs:
http://nytimesbooks.blogspot.com/
http://blog.bookcoverarchive.com/
Books:
‘Penguin by Design. A Cover Story 1935-2005’ by Phil Baines
What is Publication Design? Bhaskaran Lakshmi,
Front Cover: Great Book and Cover Design, Powers Alan
Buy.Ology
Images:
http://sottai.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/roald-dahl-the-bfg.jpg
http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/childrens/jacquelinewilson/home.htm
Interviews:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/sep/28/art.booksforchildrenandteenagers
Nick Sharratt
Sophia from DK
Other:
Information and/or interview with Sophia from DK
Interview with a member of staff from WhSmith’s Book Department
A trip to Borders/Waterstones to see how books are displayed
Group survey to discover favourite/most interesting book covers and what makes a good book cover.
Focus group to test reactions of juxtaposing book covers and content.
Does this work? Why/why not?
Hi Amy,
ReplyDeleteI think your overarching aim is to investigate the importance of book cover design to sales?
However I think you’ve got three things going on here:
Tracking and analysing the different covers of a book through its different editions/printings throughout history.
Looking at what defines the styles of fiction genres.
Looking at author/book cover illustrator partnerships.
I think you really have to choose one – or do three 4,500 word reports!
Doing a chapter on the history of book covers that does the subject justice would also be a major task and require a large amount of words – you could (I’ve found myself saying this a lot!) do the history as a graphic timeline to condense and compact the info down.
You should also consider doing research into sales and marketing and the influence of different designs if that’s what you are interested in.
I think you have the ingredients here you just nearly have to peel & boil it down.
Hope that helps,
drn