Bosman and Kidd

Chip Kidd mentioned that a book designer has to be a translator for the book and I think that is a interesting way of thinking about book cover design and it is true in a way. Book cover design requires the designer to translate the content into form/a visual representation. Funnily, Kidd talked about Type101’s exercise where you are given a word and you have to represent the meaning of the word in its type, and I did have to do that exercise in the Intro to Typography class I took. There is a lot of choices to be made for type in a book and even more choices for the cover. 

I agree that an attractive book cover can appeal to readers. I used to read a lot of physical books up until high school, at which point I started reading manga and webnovels online, and usually the book cover and title are what informs my decision to pick up the book and look at the summary. Readers can interact with physical books in ways that they can’t with e-books; for example, sniffing as mentioned by Kidd, flipping the pages and seeing everything in the book, using a bookmark and so on. To be honest, I like the feel of physical books and flipping through the pages a lot more than digital ones; however, I’ve been reading on my electronic devices in recent years because there are translations available online and it is a lot more convenient to find and read stories I’m interested in. Interestingly, a webnovel cover doesn't influence my interest in the webnovel because the focus is on the content, but a manga/comic cover does influence my interest in the manga because of the visual nature of the medium. Bosman stated, “If e-books are about ease and expedience, the publishers reason, then print books need to be about physical beauty and the pleasures of owning, not just reading.” I agree because I would love to collect physical copies of webnovels/manga I like just for the sake of having them in person and being able to flip through them; I would appreciate a good cover design. The way physical books, especially multiple volumes of books, line up on a shelf is very charming (the Buddha volumes that Kidd showed is very clever), and e-books can’t replicate that charm.

This really depends on the book and my intentions with the book, but regarding the cover design, I think books don’t necessarily need “premium design elements.” I want to be able to read the book and not worry about ruining the premium elements. In addition, the difference in price between paperback and hard cover is considerably high (I usually buy paperback due to price and ease of flipping through) and I don’t want physical books to become inaccessible due to higher price from the premium elements. 

Tiffany