Micah Tillman

As opposed to some of the graphic design I encounter in the world which is not very impressive, take a look at the following:

Depth (as in the third dimension) is an important part of a successful cover design, IMO. One doesn’t want one’s cover to make potential readers feel claustrophobic.

The depth issue may be ignored if other qualities are present (I’m not sure which), but Parker’s cover has so much depth it’s not even funny. (So stop laughing.)

The way in which space is handled in this cover allows for mystery. (It allows things to be hidden.)

And then the typography, wherein the “l” in “males” is both serifed (?) and extends between the words above it reminds one of a whale spout, as if the word “males” were itself a whale. Clever.

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And since we’re dealing with a writer for National Review, take a look at the following covers of books from NRO’s “Between the Covers” (with John J. Miller) author interviews:

Compare these two, with regard to attractiveness:

I think the one on the right wins, because the black border acts as a frame, emphasizing the white space as being a kind of indefinite openness. Also, because of the contrast with the white field, black appears closer to you in both covers, while the red appears farther away.

Therefore, putting “Fallacies” in red makes it look as if the word suddenly drops into the background — which is not what the graphic designer was trying to do by changing its color.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that “Fallacies” is simply one word in a phrase, and thus the phrase as a whole appears visually/spatially disjointed.

Since the words in red on the right are a phrase to themselves, this disjointedness doesn’t hurt, and in fact helps to emphasize the book’s title.

Tags: Books, Christopher Tollefsen, Covers, Economic Facts and Fallacies, Embryo, Graphic Design, Kathleen Parker, National Review, Robert P. George, Thomas Sowell, Typography