Work Case study
Servants of the Most Merciful
The brief
A cover that feels like mercy
The author wanted a cover that felt calm and warm, not stern: a book you would leave out on the kitchen table. We started from the night sky of the opening chapter and the gentleness of the verse the book is named after.
The details
Inside and out, one book
The same palette and motifs run from the cover through the chapter openings to the endpapers, so the book feels considered wherever it falls open.
Inside the book
Open it.
Anatomy of a cover
Everything a cover has to do.
Choose a number to see that part.
- 1 The blurb
The back-cover copy, set to read in ten seconds.
- 2 The author
A short biography, with a photograph where there is one.
- 3 Barcode and publisher
ISBN barcode, price and the publisher’s marks, placed to the printer’s rules.
- 4 The spine
Title and author sized to the spine width, worked out from the page count and the paper.
- 5 The author’s name
Set to sit with the title, not compete with it.
- 6 The title
Lettering that still reads at thumbnail size in an online shop.
- 7 The image
One picture that carries the book’s idea.