Book Covers

This isn't really a post pointing out particular aspects of graphic design, but instead a post about how styles change. These are the U.S. covers to one of my favorite series, Nightrunner by Lynn Flewelling. The first three books in the series were published in 1996, 1997, and 1999, respectively. The latest two were published in 2008 and 2010. I think it's really interesting to see how the cover design changed over a period of fourteen years, even though they're all part of the same series. Another book is set to come out next year, and the cover for that one is similar to the last two.

The first three covers all use the same font for the title, while the design of the covers themselves are similar, with the colored bars on the top and the bottom with the white type inside them. The other two are completely different from the first three but are similar to each other, because one character is shown instead of a scene from the book, with an image featuring a location behind them. Although these books were published so far apart, the designers didn't choose to make all the covers similar, and instead went with a very different design for the last two. I can't help but think that this is due to the way styles change over the years, and they just wanted to keep up with what was popular at the time.