From 99Designs:
With global conflict, a continuing climate crisis and a dawning recession, the world has had its share of gloom. But if you’re looking for escapism, 2023’s book cover design trends seem determined to banish the darkness. Bright shapes swirl, flowers blossom and wild creatures strut their stuff. Elsewhere, designers look back, finding beauty in punk’s angst and pleasure in pop art’s playful simplicity.
As you’ll see from our picks below, several of this year’s trends overlap. A common feature is typography that—despite sometimes being so big it spills off the cover—is often happy to play second fiddle to lively images and patterns. This year feels less about the words and more about the feeling: it seems like it’s time to forget guidelines around hierarchy and decorum and just let rip. These are 2023’s big cover design trends.
The 7 most inspiring book cover trends of 2023
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Abstract blends
Big type, busy backgrounds
No hierarchy
Pop art minimalism
Punk-style collage and ripped pages
Bold flower motifs
Close to the edge
1. Abstract blends
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How do you produce a striking cover that’s great for social media traction, but also keeps a sense of mystery? For many authors and designers, abstract blended covers are the answer. These bright, dynamic designs mix color and texture, suggesting randomness and creativity, and rejecting neatness, order and realism. Given many people have experienced much change in their lives or are exhausted from the global upheavals in the last few years, it’s unsurprising to see authors and designers breaking the mold when it comes to book cover design.
Though there are many vibrant patterns swirling on these book covers, this trend isn’t totally abstract. Figures often emerge from the swirl that suggests personal transformation, or a way we build pictures in our minds as we read. But, unlike covers with photographic or photorealist front covers, these books rarely feature an identifiable face, making them particularly suitable for books with multiple interpretations, or those (like self-help titles) where readers may see themselves as the main character.
2. Big typography, busy backgrounds
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It’s hard to know where to look with this trend. Great letters, usually in block capitals, stretch across the cover. But just behind them lurk bold, captivating images, often showing animals or plants. Sometimes, the text is obscured by part of the image, like the snake’s body coiling through the twin arches of an “M” in the cover below.
Link to the rest at 99Designs
I was surprised by the title because, as an Indie myself, I thought, how can they know what the trend of the future is… Well, because they are creating it or trying to. There’s an author in the write-up, with a book of poems, but it has two different covers. The same author is present with a memoir and a cover that illustrates something else… I read the blurb for that book and really didn’t want to go any further. It began, “Thirteen years later, ..blah blah.” Quite confusing. I’m going to skip these trends if I manage to write another piece of fiction.
Well, the graphic designs are (as usual) interesting… as graphic designs. Do they make me want to (buy and) read the content? Well, no. None of those offerings was appealing to me.
Guess I’m not the target. Bullet dodged.