There are many popular book cover design trends dominating 2022. Some styles like bold typographic elements continue to be relevant, while many new trends have taken up the place of older trends.
Although there is no rule to follow the trends, they help give ideas what the audience might like these days. So, to help you ensure your new book reaches the heights of success it deserves, here are eight most popular trends that are dominating book cover design in 2022.
1. Original Title Artwork
One of a book’s most crucial elements is the title. Its purpose is to draw in potential readers and provide them with crucial information regarding the plot or other contents. One of the chief objectives of book cover designers in the UK is to find distinctive and imaginative ways to bring attention to the title.
Upon researching the trends for 2020, it is seen that book cover designers were substituting photos, icons, and graphics for single (or multiple) letters in book titles. When carefully picked, the photographs can reveal information about the book’s subjects, themes, or characters.
Such adaptable graphic design fads can draw attention to cover designs and aid in book comprehension. These two actions are crucial in turning book sifters into consumers. Because of this, we anticipate seeing more author and book cover designer teams adopt this trend and use strong typography to draw attention to the cover.
2. Illusions of Depth
Since Zeuxis and Parrhasius squared off in ancient Greece, artists have embraced the “trompe l’oeil” (or art to mislead the eye) approach. And contemporary book cover artists are still aware that capturing a viewer’s attention with an eye-catching illustration is a fantastic strategy.
However, designers are always innovating and pushing the envelope. So, don’t just anticipate seeing your typical, everyday hyper-realistic trompe l’oeil. The classic is being updated by contemporary designers while preserving its striking visual effect.
3. Importance of Minimalism
A constantly prevalent design trend is minimalism. It can be found in the 2021 trends for packaging, online design, book covers, and logos. When talking about minimalism, clean typography, straightforward visuals, and lots of white space are common elements of minimalist cover designs.
This can be a really powerful design strategy to draw attention to your book. An eye will naturally be drawn to a book that placed on a visually active shelf. Because there are no unnecessary frills, choosing the ideal typeface, graphics, and layout presents a challenge with minimalism. Additionally, make sure that everything is in harmony. For instance, unless you have a sizable, loyal following that buys every book you write, the title should be larger and bolder than the author’s name.
Every image and element must convey the intended meaning. The vital words and pictures must be placed in the center of the large whitespace (areas of text or images that have been left blank). Simplicity has never been equated with an easy job to do, however, simple book covers may be incredibly powerful when done right.
4. Vibrant Designs
To stand out amid a sea of minimalism and subdued colors in 2021, wildly patterned book covers will become popular among authors and cover designers. Now, in order to be a design contrarian, you shouldn’t ever use a striking pattern for your book cover.
However, if a striking design complements the central idea of your book, it can be worthwhile to use it. As a visual metaphor for the discord discussed in the book, the gradient-colored arrows in the illustration above point in a jumbled array of directions. Such personalized layouts aid readers in better understanding the subject matter of a book.
It’s crucial to use equally powerful typography (text components) for your book’s cover if you decide to use bold patterns so that the pattern doesn’t overshadow the text. Regardless of the current trends in book design, legibility should always be the top priority.
5. Nostalgia from the Past
People often fondly recall the past when things are difficult. Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that nostalgia is becoming more powerful in the wake of 2020, one of the hardest years many people have ever experienced. This gives us reason to assume that in 2021, soothing retro design features will become more popular. In reality, there is growing evidence.
But not all books should use this design trend. A retro cover design could mislead readers if your book doesn’t deal with nostalgia or take place in a bygone era. We advise taking caution when utilizing this design fad. Feel allowed to use period-appropriate design elements, including black and white colors on your book’s cover if the book’s thematic connections to that time period are plausible.
However, covers that explicitly reflect a certain era should only be used for books that are genuinely set in that era. When readers turn through the pages of a book, retro design cues can make them reflect on the past and even evoke pleasant memories of that era.
6. The Landscape Mode
Vertical covers? How 2021! The artwork on a book’s cover may be partially or entirely turned on its side as one of the design trends for 2022. As you try to align it, the outcome can cause you to look twice or make you spin the workaround in your hands.
When placed on its side, a picture or word that appears natural when arranged horizontally can appear weird or like a foreign language. It’s a terrific strategy for works that intend to shake readers out of their complacency, mess with perception, or give reality a twist.
7. Dystopian Design
Science fiction publications have featured distorted versions of nature on their covers for a very long time. While apocalyptic sci-fi covers are prevalent in 2022, it’s amazing to see how the tendency is extending to other genres.
The selection below features a peak in a book about mountains with an ultraviolet stain, a poetry volume with a curved, sand-dune-like shape, and what appears to be a frozen Earth with fire-filled skylines. This dystopian aesthetic may become more prevalent as awareness of the state of our planet increases.
8. Grids to Frame
There will be other patterned book design trends in 2022 besides parametric. These book covers are composed of grid-like components. The designs that evolve from this trend embrace repetition and have a pleasing visual rhythm, yet the outcomes are surprisingly diverse. Some have tactile covers with floating letters, while others have a stained-glass feel.
There is a sense of hypnotic monotony, which is appropriate for a year in which many people have chosen to isolate themselves at home, but sparks of colorful pulses across many of these grids, hint at transcendence and release.
