Book Cover Design

I love the story of Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen and I love its cover art as well. It’s cover art that’s not only beautiful, and hooks your attention, but is connected to the events and people and meaning of the novel. It’s the type of cover that gives you a sense of what the book will entail in terms of plot (the double, the Pynchonian 49), and in terms of more subtle themes, such as the way that disparate events connect (all those weather-like lines across the cover, uniting and overlapping).

Which is why the cover from a new book from Soft Skull, China Underground, attracted my attention. It’s the same style of art — pencil/pen sketches, with a multiplicity of pictures across the page. In terms of eye-catching ability, it doesn’t hurt to have a faceless broad in panties. Can’t say how well the cover correlates to the innards of the book, but I’m liking this book cover style.

Billie Jean designed the Atmospheric Disturbances cover, as well as the third photo of the Roald Dahl book, and Fogelson-Lubliner created the China Underground cover.