Armchair BEA 2016, Day 2: Aesthetics and Branding

Today is all about aesthetics! The first part of this topic is concerned specifically with the books, the second with our blogs. Here are some guiding questions to get you started!

The Books: How often do you judge a book by its cover? How often are you surprised by what you find? Do you strategize and make sure every book in your series has the same cover design (as far as you are able to) and type? How important is it for the visual art on the outside of the book to match or coordinate with the literature art on the inside?

Like anyone else, I can be drawn in by a well-designed or intriguing cover. But what I hate about covers is when they don't have any synopsis on them! I don't care how gorgeous the cover is, if your back cover or the flaps of your dust jacket are nothing but effusive quotes, I'm not going to read it.

Sometimes a cover is so interesting that I get fooled by it multiple times. I always think that Geek Love is going to be about something else, and then I read the back and remember that oh, this story doesn't sound interesting to me at all. It actually sounds really unappealing. Fortunately, later covers make the circus sideshow aspect of the book way clearer, but it feels like you only ever see the first edition cover.

Image courtesy Alfred Knopf

But when I have a series, I definitely want all of the books to match. My first copy of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe had this cover by Chris van Allsburg:

Image courtesy Harper Collins

But then as I started receiving the rest of the books in the series as gifts, they were these editions with covers by Leo and Diane Dillon:

Image courtesy Harper Collins

But no one would get me The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe again because I already owned it. Later, when I had a bit of my own money and such, I picked up a copy with the Dillon art at one of my favorite local used bookstores*, just so the collection would be uniform and complete. Years afterward, my copy of Prince Caspian got lost somehow, but fortunately the same bookstore had a Dillon cover copy left.

Despite all of their problems, I still love the Narnia books and I want them to all belong together. I'm the same with most series I really love.

I like good cover art as much as anyone else, and while I don't know if an ugly cover or inappropriate cover will ever ruin a book for me, I do find them disconcerting if they don't "match." The cover on the edition of Beloved that I read, for example, was just so not appropriate for what Beloved is actually about:

Image courtesy Alfred Knopf

The Blog: As a book blogger, in whatever form that takes, branding is important. Your colors, your fonts, your style of review, all of these things come together to make the "brand" of your blog - something that makes your reviews and posts and websites, all your various content, immediately recognizable to the people looking for you. What do you do to create a brand on your site? Do you think about these things?

I don't really brand my bookishness; it's there because I like to read but that's it. But for my jewelry and my blog and my whatever else, I try to use consistent colors (the medium-light warmish blue; even my moo cards and the ribbon I use in packaging is a similar shade) and the same banner image (courtesy JV). I just like consistency, guys.

*...which is now permanently closed! What?! One of the things I was looking forward to in my trip back to the US this October is gone. And it's been replaced by a bridal boutique of all things. Excuse me, I need a minute to grieve...