Are you looking for design inspiration from the hottest book cover trends? Prepare yourself because this blog will inform you of everything, including instances from this year’s publications and other well-known releases.
A result of the escalating social media culture is the current book trends. There is a fantastic opportunity to use your readers as marketers thanks to the rise of bookstagrammers, who post book covers on their social media accounts. But all of you creative writing experts would need the best book cover design to capture their attention. See if any of the top six trends resonate with you as you look through the list below. Then simply bring it up with your preferred book design firm!
1. Wonderful Filigrees
Have you ever come across book covers with elaborate curls and patterns? Fantasy books aimed at children and young adults frequently have covers like this. That is entirely appropriate. Book covers with wavy patterns, latticework, and curlicues convey the magic of a world that has been reimagined, one that is full of mystical beings, gods and goddesses, and structures and rules that don’t exist in our everyday lives. Even though it won’t tell the entire story, it will cover the most crucial parts and make it clear to the reader that they are in for a fantastical ride.
Look at the cover of the book there. A female protagonist who ventures into the Celestial world is the focus of the narrative. The story, which is infused with Chinese mythology, centers on a daughter’s attempt to set her mother free. The daughter is clearly shown on the book cover wearing traditional Chinese clothing and gazing up at the moon, which is a reference to her mother. They are both surrounded by flowers, birds, and mystical elements, which is a true representation of the plot.
This stunning design, which is another book cover for a fantasy adventure tale, perfectly captures the questing young wizard who enters a magical forest. The thicket, with one end leading to a suspicious-looking mansion and the other showing branches that resemble eerie hands, is depicted by the green vines and grass. The typography completes the design by blending in with the vines’ filigrees.
2. 2D Pastels
The traditional 3D designs that were prevalent in fiction book cover designs have given way to the new trend of 2D designs. The samples that authors would receive from freelance designers or book design companies were frequently of three-dimensional, real-life characters in a setting important to the story. But now, circumstances have changed. People favor book covers with a “cleaner” appearance. Look at the examples below where I explain this.
The book illustration up top is for a tale of witches and monsters in a world torn asunder by war. I’m sure you would see a real-life representation of the said characters if this cover had been created in the 1980s or 1990s. However, this illustration shows the main character (a warrior-monster) engaged in combat with flames and ashes all around. The flame’s use of pastels and subdued hues draws attention to the title and the character. This is an intelligent use of colors, as any designer would recognize.
This image captures the young Kestrel’s journey to hunt down “Grabbers” in a forest and defend her village. It is another gorgeous illustration for a fiction book. She is on her own as her monster waits nearby, waiting for the right opportunity to seize her, and is only accompanied by a bloodthirsty weasel named Pippit. As a designer, I’m impressed by the illustrator’s color scheme. There are only three dominant hues: orange-brown, beige, and teal. The remaining colors are all variations of the same color. By using such a restrained color scheme, the designer lessens reader confusion. It makes sense that today every book design company has a portfolio of 2D artwork.
In general, a brain must process too many visual signals when there are too many colors present. Readers are unconsciously more drawn to covers like this because there are fewer colors, which limits processing and prevents the brain from feeling overloaded.
It’s science, so believe me.
3. Gilding
Okay, so gilding—the use of gold leaf or gold paint—was a well-known technique in the 16th century and has since been adapted into a variety of forms. Initially, the meticulously debossed designs on leather were painted or embedded with gold leaves. On-demand, these books were created as one-of-a-kinds. Gilded books later became rare when publishing houses took over. This style is now regarded as vintage.
Gilding has recently become more contemporary, and I’m all for it!
Thankfully, we now have the means to duplicate gilding effectively and affordably. Simply put, gold paint and gold accents on book covers are now permitted in book design. What a cool thing! View the patterns below.
The Starless Sea by Morgenstern is a lovely tribute to literature. The story involves spiraling and weaving into the excitement of a magical world, which might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Consider Alice in Wonderland, but with a dreamier feel. The giant bee on the cover represents the bee that serves as our protagonist’s biggest clue and directs him on his journey. I adored the background’s blue-and-black liquid paint flow design. The main character’s movement through the fantastical world is best portrayed in this way.
The gilding, too!
Shiny gold paint is used to create the enormous bee and the spots in the bottom right. very worthy of Instagram. If you look up book review videos, you can see how the gold reflects when it catches the light even though the picture might not show the gilding. Incredible design!
The cover of the 2022 book The Sunbearer Trials features gilding as an outline. Although simple, it functions! Ideal for a tale involving a sun god.
This trend of modernizing gilding is wonderful. There are numerous ways to use it, including solid colors, outlines, or shine to draw attention to a particular object. It’s a genius way to incorporate vintage style into contemporary art. You can get ideas from these examples and ask your preferred book design firm to implement them for your book!
4. Brush Watercolor Art
Another trend that results from people’s renewed love for minimalism and simple designs, this one is fairly self-explanatory. The appearance of the watercolors is stunning. You have a ton of options at your disposal. And if all else fails, a straightforward watercolor painting with a variety of colors makes an excellent background. Look at the illustration below:
Watercolors, as I previously stated, make a fantastic background. The title can be easily added by a designer in the ideal font. A Boy Called Cin’s cover art does this flawlessly. Take a look!
Okay, so The Ocean in My Ears’ cover might not be entirely created with watercolor brushes, but I’ve included it anyway to give you an idea of how mixed media book covers can look. Like pasta and garlic bread, pointer doodles and watercolors go well together. The latter merely enhances the former. The art directors or creative writers who came up with the idea for this cover deserve a big thumbs up. Additionally, the designer did a fantastic job!
The watercolor brush paint covers for the Poppy War series are by far the most exquisite ones I have ever seen. Red, blue, and gold are the only colors used in each book, which gives it the “this-is-a-collectible-series” appearance that readers would adore to own and display on their bookshelves.
That’s the whole point, right?
5. Text-Only or Background-Over-Text
The trending cover design you can choose from is this one because it is the most straightforward and uncomplicated. This may be the best option for you if you don’t want to use a cover design that gives away too much about your story.
However, let me clarify that simply does not equate to ugly before you give me the side-eye. There’s a good reason why it’s one of this year’s most popular cover designs!
Text-only book covers offer designers the chance to experiment with typography, a crucial but often-overlooked component of design that has the greatest impact. The font used in the Goosebumps series is my favorite illustration for bringing this point home.
Let’s now examine some examples of this category’s book cover designs.
In the novel Reminders of Him, a mother wants to get back in touch with her daughter despite everyone else’s wishes. The illustration features a purple text overlay with birds on top of an aqua background. This artwork is appropriate for the story, which is a poignant tearjerker. It evokes the feeling of hope you get when gazing up at the sky and watching birds fly by when you look at it.
The Unsinkable Greta James will be released in 2022. It deals with fame, difficulties in life, difficult choices, and love. It takes a lot of effort to design such a depressing plot. To illustrate Greta’s journey and her cruise with her father, the expert who worked on this project opted for a text-focused category rather than a cruise background. The background is divided by the text, and each “band” of words is given a different color by the designer. It’s a novel approach to this genre and will undoubtedly become popular with bookstagrammers.
6. Minimalist Art
I’m exaggerating when I say that minimalist designs are currently very popular. Reprints of well-known books with minimalist covers have increased dramatically recently, which speaks volumes about how popular this trend is.
For those who are still unaware, minimalist art reduces each work of art to its most basic form and employs a small color palette, which is frequently pastel but is not always, as you will see in the examples below.
A language cult’s strange obsession with killing people who meet certain criteria based on their names is the subject of the mystery/thriller The Names. The cover of the Picador publication featured a simple layout. The quotation marks in the illustration were cleverly made out of people’s shadows as they peered out a window or door. A sophisticated method employed by typographers is the use of negative space to create shapes. This can serve as inspiration for your upcoming book cover design as well.
The first volume of Jackson Pearce’s Fairytale Retellings series, Sisters Red, serves as our final illustration. Two werewolf-hunting sisters at the center of the tale are very dissimilar from one another. Their opposing natures and cooperation against the werewolves are depicted in a stunning minimalist illustration on the book cover. And all of that with just four colors. That is the height of minimalism!
How Can I Get an Affordably Trendy Book Cover Design?
Get some creative writing professionals and designers involved in your project if you want the best trendy book cover design. This allows you to simply hand them your manuscript so that the two teams can work together to turn it into a visually appealing cover. A trustworthy book design company is your best bet for the best outcomes.
- However, which one would you pick?
- Why not try Creative Writing Professionals?
What Makes Creative Writing Experts Your Company of Choice for Book Design?
Creative Writing Experts is more than just a service for ghostwriting. It is a fully functional book creation and publication business that aids self-publishing authors in spreading their stories throughout the globe.
Even though writing is what every author prioritizes, they might wait to think about the cover until the manuscript is finished. They might not even have a plan by that point!
Here is where we come to your aid. In addition to assisting with writing, editing, and publishing, we also provide design support. Our book design company has groups of illustrators and designers who specialize in different fields of art, and they can make a beautiful book cover for you. Talk to our designers today, and they will work with you to create a book cover you and your readers will adore if you already have an art style in mind or if the trends mentioned above have inspired you!
