The New York Times (pdf) has a little feature today about how book covers are designed. I’ve noticed for a long time that there tend to be fads in cover design, although I don’t know enough about design to be able articulate what I see. This article explains how these fads become institutionalized.
Take these three Michael Crichton novels as an example (I’ve added State of Fear to the examples use in the NYT).
The 
Take these three Michael Crichton novels as an example (I’ve added The covers share several elements in common: A red, white, and black color scheme; an iconic black and white image relating to the themes of the story; a modern, information-age font, with the author’s name larger than the title.
In fact, the title of Next is pretty hard to find. But who cares? It’s a Michael Crichton novel, and that’s all we need to know.
In fact, the title of Next is pretty hard to find. But who cares? It’s a Michael Crichton novel, and that’s all we need to know.
