I don’t know about you, but gasoline prices have been on the forefront of my mind these days. So I’ve decided to take a look at books currently on the shelves about the coming oil shortage.
My favorite in this category is The Party’s Over by Richard Heinberg.
This is a perfect marriage of title and image. The dark humor is shocking yet completely appropriate for the dire subject matter. The type is well-placed and does not deter from the powerful image.
Now, compare the revised and updated cover to the original:
It is clear why this cover needed a redesign. The typography used is almost identical, but the image is so much less effective. It took me several minutes to even realize that the illustration is a tipped over wine glass. This is not a horrible idea, but it is undeveloped.
Now, compare these two covers:
The photographs used are very similar, an oilfield during sunset. But in Twilight in the Desert, the image is reduced to its bare essentials: a single tower and the setting sun. The Twilight in the Desert cover succeeds where Hubbert’s Peak fails because Twilight’s title and the image on the cover work together and all the design elements are clean and simple.
I have two final covers:
Both of these covers work. The words of the titles are reinforced visually, and the type is handled well. For example, on The Bottomless Well’s cover, the title is slightly obscured by the gasoline and the pump. This overlap serves to marry the image and the type. In Out of Gas, the subtitle visually completes the trajectory of the drop of oil. If I had to choose, I prefer the more contemporary approach of The Bottomless Well, but both designs are truly well executed.
