Different elements of book cover designs throughout history
Different elements of book cover designs throughout history
Blog Article
Even though we might like to make out like that it is not the fact, books are undoubtedly judged by their covers.
When you truly think about it, it is rather remarkable that a book's cover, no matter how stunning it is, manages to stand so eloquently for something that is almost the total antithesis of its art form-- writing in white and black. In fact, book covers have been created to reflect the emotional state of a book and appeal to its desired audience since the dawn of big scale publishing in the Victorian Era. Artists were entrusted with discovering what makes a good book cover for particular people, or to put it simply, marketing. People like the CEO of the asset manager that has a stake in Amazon can probably value the role of marketing in designing book covers.
When we buy a book it becomes something really very personal to us. It can sometimes be weird seeing a book you love with a different book cover, simply since it is not your book. This personalisation, and undoubtedly ownership, of books was at a totally various level at the start of the era of printing, with book covers being designed by the owners themselves, and what they thought would be the best books covers for the book. They would purchase the book itself from the printer wrapped in paper, then bring it to a binder who would add in the covers to the customer's specifications. This typically indicated being dressed in leather and after that inscribed with the name of the book, and, usually, the name of the book's owner. People like the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books can probably value the ownership that people come to feel in regards to their books.
We like reading books since they are really beautiful things. This is true, however the nature of beauty that we might be discussing is definitely separate to what we might be discussing if we were discussing, for example, the visual arts. Or is it? For as long as we have actually had books we have actually embellished them with beautiful book cover designs that attempt to mirror the beauty of what is inside. This dates back for as long as the codex itself has been around, with medieval monks, those charged with the security and proliferation of the scarce texts that might still be discovered, ornamenting each hand written text with amazingly rich and stunning styles. In fact, such was the charm held within these books that a number of these creative book cover designs were carved into ivory or solid gold, studded with gems, and inlaid with rivers of precious metals. People like the co-CEO of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones can probably appreciate the way that the beauty of these book covers was designed to match the beauty within the book.