15 Fantastic Book Cover Designs That Make Type the Star

Whether you’re tasked with designing your own book covers or simply relish a new read, book browsing can teach us much about impactful design. The following inspiring book cover designs make type the star by playing with color, spacing, interesting fonts, and effective use of background photos. Get inspiration for your own book cover design made with Adobe Express by browsing a few of our favorite book covers that make typography shine.

We love how this simple design uses the strong lines of the background image to align text, creating a strong connection between the type and image.

In this case, color, rather than spacial hierarchy, brings the most weight to the title of the book, while the higher placement of the subhead makes the subject clear even though the title is more abstract. We love the use of text cut outs here, too, which is easily done in Adobe Express by cycling through the options under Shape.

A busy background photo and lots of supportive text could threaten the hierarchy and legibility of this design, but the designer cleverly makes the title pop by placing it in an opaque shape.

Sometimes busy-ness can be an artistic choice, as in this book cover art by Anne Chalmers for Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel. A solid background with a contrasting font color means legibility isn’t compromised.

Hint at your background image by using text cut-outs to accomplish a similar beautiful effect.

You’ve gotta love the shadowing here, and that sneaky “BY” crawling down the side of the page. Quiet stylistic choices, like a black and white color scheme and intentional text blocking, make a dramatic impression.

Try out a pattern as the canvas for your text. The stars twinkling behind this LED-style lettering only makes the cover image burn brighter in the viewer’s imagination. We also love the alternating colors and balanced composition achieved by centering the text.

Applying a grid or a collage layout here creates an orderly appearance and allows for a lot of information to exist in one small space. A colored background behind the title creates hierarchy, while various fonts create a stylistic choice to play up all the authors represented.

Clean, white text stand out on a two-tone background pattern and we like how there’s a clear distinction between title and author with the white line.

A shift in color is an easy way to make a few critical words pop. Swooping, hand lettering style typography evokes serious dreaminess.

Did you know that the human brain can easily figure out jumbled words? Experiment with the placement of letters and words, and give people an eye-catching brain puzzle that inspires them to linger longer on your content.

Drop shadows and color-pairing can add a little extra something to otherwise clean text. Accomplish a similar effect in your book cover design made with Adobe Express under the style tab and take advantage of Adobe Express’ suggested color pairings.

We love the graphic background on Adiche’s read. The neutral backing behind the text keeps the design from being too busy. Ensure legibility on patterns in Adobe Express by selecting a background shape for your text.

Design Your Own

Designing your own book covers is a snap with Adobe Express! Combine photos, patterns, various layouts, and text to create awesome graphics in minutes. Start from scratch or use the following designs as jumping off points.

Article by Claire Margine
Photo by Robyn Budlender on Unsplash