Brief 7: Book Cover Research

I went into Waterstones to try and get a bit of inspiration for the Puffin brief, and I especially wanted to research into the most successful and attractive teenage fiction book covers, as this is the intended target audience. In truth there were only a few really amazing examples of book cover design for the teen fiction audience, in general many of the covers are quite generic and cliched. There were lots of simple photographic covers, or ones with fantasy illustrations or quite typical 'teenage' type. I don't quite understand why more effort isn't made with some of them. However, saying this, the more 'real life' stories definitely had better covers and were more thought out and conceptual. Something I noticed about a lot of the covers I appreciated, and what I had already noticed from researching online is that hand rendered type is quite popular, and I think suits the audience well. I have included a couple of covers intended for adults that feature hand rendered type as well, just so I have a visual reference of successful type examples. 

Several of the teenage fiction examples also feature a special printed finish, which I think adds something extra to the covers, and is effective in making them more desirable to their audience.