Re: Series Design

As a child, I actually owned a lot of the Nancy Drew books. My mom grew up with them so she insisted that I did too. While I never finished reading all of them, even now I remember the consistence (for the most part) that each book design had in the series. You can see below that there is a consistency (again-for the most part) between the font used, colors, and overall subject of the design (the character Nancy Drew illustrated within a scene in the book) which I believe would fall under the "signature illustration" Mary Beth described.

Then there is the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series that falls under the "aligned spine" and "title placement" category.

And lastly James Patterson's series which falls under the "minimal approach" with " 'striking' " graphics (which is more like an overwhelmingly amount of type placed on top a photo).