I do feel that many book covers can be overly designed, but I also feel that that can be the case with any piece of design. Whether its an author or a business wanting a logo, I think any client can become attached to their idea of what they want. I'm not sure how many times I hear "let's jazz it up" or "let's get crazy with the design" and so often times jazz and crazy to me mean "let's muddy this up and make it extremely define a motive". I just then know it's my job to convince the client to trust me with my job, just like someone trusts them with theirs, and come up with a conceivable concept/design. You wouldn't tell a doctor how to do their job, right?
In looking through some examples of book design, I came across this blog on BuzzFeed, "26 Hilariously Bad Book Designs". While all of them were just bad (and highly inappropriate), I thought I'd share two that I know include too many elements that confuse the viewer.
I just can't even justify any part of this design, elements and construction.
Is Mary Poppins a witch who likes Halloween?
Thankfully, I can rectify these terrible designs with good ones, thanks to "20 Beautiful Book Cover Designs to Swoon Over"
The use of the books to represent teeth and clean typography is definitely "swoon" worthy.
The interesting cut paper effect with the idea that even under gray/rainy skies (something bad), there's sunlight (representing good) makes me believe that even though the book is titled "The End or Something Like That" something good comes out of something bad.
