Stunning Book Covers – Academy of British Cover Design Awards 2015

The competitive threat posed by e-books has triggered a creative explosion in cover design and bookshops are now full of striking, colourful, sometimes even tactile, book covers.

A good book cover should not only grab your attention, but also tell us something about the content of the book. Or as Peter Mendelsund, one of the top cover designers in the U.S., says: “finding that unique textual detail that…can support the metaphoric weight of the entire book.”

The Academy of British Cover Design awards (ABCD awards) is now in its second year and here are some of the short-listed covers and winners (the first cover in every category). There are lots more on their website Abcovered.co.uk.

I love the creepy cover of Alan Wall’s Badmouth, the movement and pace of Michael Mopurgo’s War Horse and the simplicity of Howard Jacobsen’s J and Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty More. And I’ve found myself stroking the beautiful cover of Michael Faber’s The Book of Strange Things. Which are your favourites?