This is a very interesting cover. If you imagine it without the large yellow sticker, you are left with a rather flat image in dull colours (actually it looks like it has been shot in a passport photo booth) with a standard stock shot of a woman looking scared. (The kind of thing you see on Nora Roberts’ covers all the time)
This is combined with very boring typography and an author who most people have never heard of. Of course there is the compelling line at the bottom which reads ‘Over 5 million books sold worldwide’ but even this feels a little lost and somehow odd when you have never heard of the book or the author before.
No, the killer design decision on this cover was to slam a bloody great roundel on the front which screams ‘The Next Stieg Larsson’. Suddenly, the previously dull image of the girl triggers associations with Lisbeth Salander and the 5 million books sold worldwide line carries much more weight.
This is a brilliant use of a quote. The genius was in rejecting the standard approach of placing it at the top of the cover in neat type and instead, making it the very centrepiece of the design. The Designers haven’t messed about with being subtle. They know that the message on the large roundel will meet a need in thousands of readers who have been left bereft by the end of the Millenium Trilogy and so everything else has been pushed aside.
There is no beauty here and that is what makes it special. Every publisher in the world is jumping on the Larsson bandwagon but few have been this brutal or bold in their communication.
Even the fact that it looks like a sticker that has been put on the cover by the retailer is a nice touch: It adds an extra layer of authority and credibility.
This is a clever cover because rather than try to create something distinctive and beautiful they have created something direct and commercial. Most people try to do all these things but it is very hard to pull off. Here, cold commercialism has won because the designers didn’t try to dress it up as anything else.
As all the best Designers say: Be clear before you are clever…
Straplines… shoutlines… copylines… Whatever we call them, and whatever we use them for, one thing is consistent — the inordinate amount of time, energy and heartache we spend on them.
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