Book Covers. The interaction of word and image

Last Tuesday graphic artist and published author Brian Fies lectured our class about the process of creating his graphic novel "Mom's Cancer". The part of the lecture I found particularly interesting was the process that he along with his designer and editor went through to create the book cover. As the popular saying goes, "you can't judge a book by the cover". This is true when metaphorically referring to the shallow judgment of a persons character based on their looks. However, literally speaking, that is exactly what we do when choosing a book on the shelf at a bookstore or library. This puts a whole different spin on the purpose of design for the book cover. Marketing suddenly takes center stage when decisions need to be made about how the use of words and image can best represent the book. Psychology can play a part in the choice of what colors to use or even the typeface. Fies showed us about 20 different mock-ups for the book cover and that was only a small portion of the actual number they took into careful consideration. In the end they chose the original idea which was an image of Fies's mom from the book with the title in the upper left hand corner. The simplicity of this cover allows the powerful image to speak for the book. The title fills in any blanks that might be there, but somehow I don't think there would be many.