An attempt at reading book covers and what they could be saying

An attempt at reading book covers and what they could be saying

Blog Article

Keep reading to find a couple of different concepts connecting to the way we see book covers set along the side of their history.

When we buy a book it becomes something extremely personal to us. It can in some cases be weird seeing a book you like with a different book cover, simply since it is not your book. This personalisation, and certainly ownership, of books was at a completely different level at the dawning of the age of printing, with book covers being designed by the owners themselves, and what they believed would be the best books covers for the book. They would purchase the book itself from the printer wrapped in paper, then take it to a binder who would bring in the covers to the client's specs. This generally implied being dressed in leather and after that etched with the name of the book, and, most of the time, the name of the book's owner. People like the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books can most likely appreciate the ownership that individuals come to feel in relation to their books.
When you really think about it, it is quite remarkable that a book's cover, no matter how lovely it is, is able to stand so eloquently for something that is nearly the complete antithesis of its art form-- writing in black and white. In fact, book covers have actually been created to show the mood of a book and appeal to its designated audience since the advent of big scale publishing in the Victorian Age. Artists were tasked with finding what makes a good book cover for specific individuals, or to put it simply, marketing. Individuals like the CEO of the asset manager that has a stake in Amazon can most likely appreciate the role of marketing in developing book covers.
We like reading books since they are extremely stunning things. This holds true, however the nature of beauty that we might be speaking about is certainly different to what we might be discussing if we were discussing, for example, the visual arts. Or is it? For as long as we have had books we have actually embellished them with beautiful book cover designs that effort to mirror the appeal of what is within. This goes back for as long as the codex itself has actually been around, with middle ages monks, those charged with the protection and procreation of the rare texts that might still be found, ornamenting each hand written text with amazingly rich and stunning designs. In fact, such was the charm held within these books that a lot of these creative book cover designs were carved into ivory or solid gold, studded with gems, and inlaid with rivers of precious metals. Individuals like the co-CEO of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones can probably value the manner in which the beauty of these book covers was developed to match the beauty within the book.