Inspirational Book Covers & Fonts

As I have chosen a wartime story I started researching different novels with the same theme such as H.G Wells' War of The Worlds, Michael Morpurgo's War Horse. and Nicholas Pringle's World War One Frontline News. The reason I find these particular novels intriguing is their use of simplistic silhouettes and the use of red, most likely to symbolise the bloody carnage that surrounded those eras. In The War of The Worlds the font is kept clean and minimalistic which pairs will with the striking silhouettes of the alien pod and buildings. The artwork also shows levels of dominance with the alien pod looming large over the buildings and family below giving a sense of impending doom and destruction. I like the idea of using white for the font in contrast to the over powering reds and blacks, it almost shows a glimmer of hope or a patch of clear sky so to speak.

With Michael's War Horse the artwork again shows eye-catching reds mixed with hints of scratchy blacks. The font used in this cover is cleverly positioned within the horse silhouette and is also a similar type of design with almost hand drawn lettering. I like the idea of placing the font inside the main image. In this case the image of the horse is almost self explanatory on its own with the charging pose and deep imposing reds, so having the font inside the horse we read it later after observing the horse first. Compared to The War of The Worlds this cover is a lot more rustic and gives the sense that something is charging towards us.

I also chose World War One Frontline News because it seems to incorporate both styles of the previous books with rustic elements like War Horse and the clean, bold silhouettes of The War of The Worlds. This works well because of the subject matte in the book cover, we see two soldiers with carrying an exhausted posture carrying huge bags upon their backs. The grunge marks add to the disturbing atmosphere, however, I feel the author would have benefited from a smaller font much like the font used in The War of The Worlds, it seems the font in this novel is too overbearing and possibly too distracting. They could also play around with the number of soldiers I.E. having one soldier the the word 'One' placed in the center of the character and 'World War' above it, so as to incorporate aspects of both the previous novels.