Acquiring some knowledge of book cover ideas throughout the years

Acquiring some knowledge of book cover ideas throughout the years

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From handwritten riches bound in ivory and gems to judging a novel by its cover in a bookshop today; this is the story of book covers.

They say that a house without books resembles a space without windows. For those utilized to being surrounded by beautiful book cover designs that is absolutely true; books add an actually crucial, cosy sensation to a home. People have been decorating their books ever since books were developed, their covers, which were, and still are, created to safeguard the fragile pages within, covered with art designed to show the work within. The very first book covers were decorated by monks in the middle ages, who would protect those especially valuable, unusual, handwritten works with elaborate designs made from sculpted ivory, frequently studding them with jewels and precious metals. The care and richness given to their design shows just what treasures books were throughout that period of time, as the CEO of the asset manager with a stake in Amazon will likely value.

We are really lucky to reside in a time when we can just walk into a bookshop and select a book that piques our fancy off the racks. Ways in which we choose a book is quite up for argument, but evaluating a book by its cover can be a vital part of that, as it has probably been carefully designed to interest our tastes (if it is a book we will delight in of course). Standardized book covers date back to the Victorian period, when early marketers and artists tried to find out what makes a good book cover, producing gorgeous fabric book covers for more refined literary works, and pulpy paperbacks for lower-brow works. A comparable system still runs today, as the founder of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones will probably understand.

There is something remarkable about creative book cover designs, but typically the feeling of a book is just as important. Books that have leather covers, for example, always feel really special, like something older and extremely crucial. Leather book covers go back to the renaissance, when printing made books much less rare than throughout the middle ages when they had to be transcribed by hand, but the capability to read and own books was still limited to a select few from the upper classes. At the time consumers did not buy their books whole, but collect them from the printers with a temporary joint and wrapped in paper, before taking them to be bound by experts. This would almost always be in leather, inscribed with something simple, such as the name of the book, the author, and the initials of the owner. They need to have felt like really essential, unique books indeed, as the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books can most likely imagine.