Cover Trend: That One Serif Font
I love me a good book cover trend. This is one you’ve seen everywhere. It’s similar to the big cover trend of 2018, outlined by Literary Hub, but with one tweak. Instead of a big, bold sans-serif font on a vibrant background, these have a serif font on a solid background. Simple. Gorgeous. It’s a good trend, Brent.
The majority of the books with this treatment are non-fiction by and about white women, with a few exceptions. If you flip through a list of feminist works of 2018, a good chunk of them will fit this cover trend. I guess it’s a ~girly~ look? It’s also the go-to font for a lot of fashion blogs right now.
It seems like the trend got started in 2017, with these two:
The Girl in the Show: Three Generations of Comedy, Culture, & Feminism by Anna Fields
Sex & Rage by Eve Babitz
But THEN 2018 happened, and, hoo boy, have we got a lot of them. Let’s take a gander. Also, sorry (not sorry) in advance, but you will be finding this cover trend everywhere now.
Black Swans by Eve Babitz
Conscience: A Novel by Alice Mattison
The Dakota Winters by Tom Barbash
Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin
Dictionary Stories: Short Fictions and Other Findings by Jez Burrows
Feminasty: The Complicated Woman’s Guide to Surviving the Patriarchy Without Drinking Herself to Death by Erin Gibson
From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey-Stein
Horse: A Novel by Talley English
MI5 and Me: A Coronet Among the Spooks by Charlotte Bingham
Man with a Seagull on His Head by Harriet Paige
Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings: The Emotional Costs of Everyday Life by Mari Ruti
Putney by Sofka Zinovieff
She Called Me Woman: Nigeria’s Queer Women Speak, edited by Azeenarh Mohammed, Chitra Nagarajan, Aisha Salau
Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Someone Has Led This Child to Believe: A Memoir by Regina Louise
Tell Me Lies by Carola Lovering
Unwifeable: A Memoir by Mandy Stadtmiller
Note that I *do* work in book design, but I’m not, like, super savvy in the world of typefaces, so don’t @ me about these not all being exactly Bodoni Old Style Bold. THEY’RE CLOSE.
