Fun With Flags -- and Book Cover Design

Earlier this week – because I had the time – I watched a TED talk featuring Roman Mars, where he discusses flag design, of all things.

He goes through the basics of what makes for good flag design, and what makes for a crappy flag. And he points out something pretty interesting: If a flag is well-designed, you’ll see it or elements of it everywhere. Thus the ubiquity of, say, American flag-themed items. Or Confederate flag-themed items. He focuses on the flag for the City of Chicago, and then goes on to discuss the five principles of vexillography, the art of flag design:

1. Keep it simple. A flag should be so simple a child can draw it from memory
2. Use meaningful symbolism: A flag’s images, colors, or patterns should relate to what it symbolizes
3. Use 2-3 basic colors: Limit the number of colors on a flag to three, colors which contrast well and come from the standard color set.
4. No lettering or seals. Never use writing of any kind, or an organization’s seal
5. Be distinctive or be related. Avoid duplicating other flags, but use similarities to show connections.

What most amateur flag designers forget, Roman says, is that most people see flags from a distance, roughly at a size that appears to be one inch tall by 1 ½ inches wide. Thus lettering, seals and such disappear into the muck and become unreadable.

I’m beginning to think these principles can be applied to book cover design.

And I’m not just blowing smoke. I spend a lot of time at lousybookcovers.com and covercritics.com, both operated by Nathan Shumate, a Utah-based artist and writer. Gleaning from his blogs, I believe flag design and book cover design have quite a bit in common, particularly the need to be easily identifiable in a small size – the ubiquitous thumbnail all booksellers use to peddle our wares.

So here are my revised principles for book cover design:

1. Keep it simple. A book cover should be so simple a child can draw it from memory. In this case, maybe not necessarily all the detail, but enough that a person looking from the drawing to the cover could say, yeah, that drawing is based on that cover.
2. Use meaningful symbolism: A book cover’s images, colors, or patterns should relate to what it symbolizes. Shumate and Company are constantly saying “Your blurb says X but your cover says Y.” They should both say the same thing.
3. Color and texture: Color and texture transmit content and genre, and also attract eyeballs looking for something similar to what’s already been read.
4. Legible lettering. Obviously, books are going to have text on the cover, there’s no way around that. But any text should be legible both at full size and in thumbnail, and fit the genre of the book.
5. Be distinctive or be related. Avoid duplicating other covers, but use similarities to show connections.

I’m open to having these principles tweaked. I know I have a lot to learn about cover design (see my previous attempts here). But I’m hoping some thinking and tinkering will help me, as Fezzik does, sniff the good meat from the rotted.