Judging a Book by Its Cover: Columbine

...by Henry Sene Yee Design: Columbine

Designer Henry Sene Yee blogs about designing the cover for Columbine (recently reviewed by Beth).

I thought that like 9/11, this was a regular day in the life of a regular high school. I wanted to depict the banality of school life . . .

The Book Cover Archive

Are you a fan of great book covers? Yes? Then I recommend you head right over to The Book Cover Archive: An Archive of Book Cover Designs and Designers. You can browse by designer, title, author, art director, photographer, illustrator, genre, publication date, or publisher. What more could you want? What's that? A blog, you say, to go along with the archive? Here you go: the Book Cover Archive Blog.

I love this book cover: The Lie Detectors

The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession
by Ken Alder

University of Nebraska Press designer Joel Gehringer kindly agreed to share some thoughts on designing this cover:

Is there anything in particular you'd like to share about this design?

I have to give a lot of credit to the editors on the design for "The Lie Detectors." After we had tried a number of different concepts, they decided they wanted something evoking the Dick Tracy-esque, pop-art feel of the 1950s, and the paranoia of the era, which plays a big role in the lie detector's history. In that sense, they started me down the path for this one.

Where did you find the images you used?

I went searching for something I thought would fit these concepts and came along some great art at one of our photo services. The artist had a number of fairly basic comic book panels that weren't too exciting on their own - expressions, detectives, cars, faces, that kind of stuff.

How did you arrive at the decision to crop them the way you did?

I realized that with the right framing I could make those images a little more dramatic and get at that nervous paranoia. I think the idea that you can't see the whole face of the man at the top forces the imagination to churn a bit (I added the lie detector devices on the fingers, so now I tend to imagine he's getting nervous because of some tough questions). On the bottom, I cropped a fairly plain image of a smiling detective with a magnifying glass to make him into a more ominous, dangerous-looking figure, maybe an interrogator of some sort. The angles just add to the uneveness, making it less orderly and thus more dramatic.

Rate My Book Cover

I ran across a mention of this site on Joe Wikert's blog. I'm not sure it's useful for determining what's best for a book's cover (we've all heard nightmares about "design by committee"), but it sure is addictive!

Judging a book by its cover

This is one of my all-time favorite book covers (technically it's the front cover of a jacket). I'm not sure exactly what it is about it that makes me so drawn to it. The first time UNP designer Annie Shahan showed it to me I said that I would buy that book for the jacket alone. I love the colors, the image, and especially the way she handled the type.

In the Shadow of Memory
by Floyd Skloot
University of Nebraska Press

In December 1988 Floyd Skloot was stricken by a virus that targeted his brain, leaving him totally disabled and utterly changed. In the Shadow of Memory is an intimate picture of what it is like to find oneself possessed of a ravaged memory and unstable balance and confronted by wholesale changes in both cognitive and emotional powers. Skloot also explores the gradual reassembling of himself, putting together his scattered memories, rediscovering the meaning of childhood and family history, and learning a new way to be at home in the world. Combining the author’s skills as a poet and novelist, this book finds humor, meaning, and hope in the story of a fragmented life made whole by love and the courage to thrive.