Book Cover Design

Anouilh

Hello.

Normally I hang out in the Photography Forum...

I am interested in fashions in book cover design and would like to learn more.
It seems that mimosa yellow was a fashionable colour, especially in the US, in 2009.

At present there is a tendency towards duotone in book cover design, notably in the noir genre:

http://usenet.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055662865

Do designers here think that this is set to continue or are there new styles on the way for 2010?

Anouilh

Book designers might find this site useful:

http://www.nijomu.com/?p=200

woytek_tzn

duotone sounds poor for fashion style book or zine...

Anouilh

This site has a tutorial which explains the advantages of using duotone to rescue a poor scan;

http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/blended_duotone.html

Anouilh

woytek_tzn wrote: »

duotone sounds poor for fashion style book or zine...

I would be interested to know why you think this is so.

Many French polars have dutone covers as well as architectual textbooks.

http://polars.pourpres.net/?aff-pol-pol_1731

There seems to be a tradition within publishing, where certain designs have become associated with specific subjects.

Worth discussing, perhaps, as it saves time when it comes to designing for a given market.

Anouilh

Books by Irish authors seem to have a trend in using duotone schemes on the covers.

http://bookcoversanonymous.blogspot.com/2009/03/milan-bozic-keith-hayes-ervin-serrano.html

Apart from the tradition of duotone being associated with scientific works, the thriller genre seems to use it a lot.

smelltheglove

At the request of Anouilh, a sample shot from slightly outside the duotone bracket. Looking at this topic I think the style would be a great style for thriller style books, whether this one is suited one I do not know, but the father in law of this bride most definitely thinks so.

Anouilh

The discussion on Duotone and photography has moved on, taking in the "Noir" style in more detail.

http://usenet.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055662865&page=7

If designers here have work they would like to share, it would be interesting for photographers, I think.

Hank_Scorpio

This is a useful resource

http://bookcoverarchive.com/

Anouilh

The discussion took and interesting turn in relation to gender and the Noir tradition recently:

http://www.mobile.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=62972705#post62972705

I have noticed that books by Magnum photographers use a lot of duotone.

What are the most popular colours at the moment?

Chick Lit, for the past few years, is always presented in vivid pastels. Covers for Thrillers seem to use three main colours, at most.

enol

I'm doing the artwork on a book at the moment, its a book illustrating the history of an area over 400yrs. The client has specifically requested the photos look 'old', so I'm using duotones to achieve that. The original scans would just look flat & lifeless otherwise.

The entire inside pages will be duotones, and the front cover will be CMYK, but any photos on the front cover will be the duotones.

Im not sure about this being a trend, its just a necessity. I done the same with similar photos for years previous to this, and will probably be doing it way past 2010!

Anouilh

Duotone has such a long history.

In fact, full colour is quite a new phenemonon.

The discussion on Noir has been continued in the Photography Forum:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=63031793#post63031793

I find it difficult to write critiques in the setting of a fast moving forum, but perhaps in time it will become more possible.

If your work is online, it would be interesting to see some links here.