All My Mother’s Lovers by Ilana Masad (Dutton)
Lynn Buckley’s jacket design for Ilana Masad’s debut novel All My Mother’s Lovers (Dutton) follows a trend that has been criticized by Mike Dempsey for its formulaic character:
[…] the jacket has to be typographical – with BIG type and er, you know, a sort of trendy abstract background. That should make it look different and stand out.
I’d assume that the main reason why we see so many covers and jackets cooked after this recipe in recent years is the fact that this approach works reliably when shown in small preview images on web shops and in apps. Too often, marketing departments fail to see the need of developing a range of visual assets, optimized for various sizes. Optical sizes for book promotion, so to speak. Of course there have to be thumbnails that work well online. That doesn’t mean the actual book jacket always has to have gigantic type with a dash of color (and little else).
I don’t have a quibble with this specific design. On the contrary, I find it quite appealing, and the font choice is particularly nice: It’s Canela Black, the heaviest member of the family designed by Miguel Reyes. Released by Commercial Type in 2016, Canela was selected by Ben Kiel as his Favorite Typeface of the Year, and is still a fresh and underappreciated choice. It’s just that there are so many other covers that follow a similar formula.
