No cover design is 100% new. Even the most seasoned designers will echo, mimic, and borrow from popular design trends when they stumble across something that works. And who can blame them? Designing book covers is so notoriously difficult that we have an entire idiom warning us not to dismiss a book just because it’s wearing an ugly jacket.
It would appear that sunbursts are to be a prevalent trend this summer, preferably in rainbow hues.
Check out the best ones I’ve seen so far this year:
It was the lovely Jessie Gang of HarperCollins who first pointed out this trend to me back in February 2021, and since then I seem to be seeing them everywhere. A square-centric magazine-esque layout usually featuring a photograph (often jauntily set off-center) along with either some cool, modern, lower-case serif or bold upper-case sans serif. Here are some examples of the best I’ve seen so far.
