Features
How to Judge a Book by Its Cover
7 Black Artists and Book Designers Disrupting the Book World
Gabby Whiten is a fashion, beauty, and pop culture content creator living in New York City. Gabby writes The Weekly, a collection of reviews, recommendations, and quippy commentary covering a wide range of topics, including books, music, film and TV, style, and makeup. Each edition is delivered in a “mini magazine”-style graphic that combines her love for the lifestyle glossies of the 2000s with the dynamics of the internet. Gabby is also a recent graduate of the NYU School of Medicine’s Biomedical Sciences doctoral program, where she studied iron metabolism and degeneration. She loves analyzing trends in fashion, beauty, and pop culture through a data and research-driven perspective. She would describe herself as a romance sun, thriller moon, and literary fiction rising. You can find Gabby on Instagram.
If you think about it, the aisles (and aisles) of books in your favorite independent bookstore are really just functional mini galleries. Book designers have a big job — to entice a potential new reader with a visual representation of the world of words contained within a new novel, memoir, or manual. Whether you gravitate toward “high” art or creatively manipulated typefaces, a beautiful cover can be mesmerizing. Black artists and designers continuously infuse the book space with vibrant and lush covers for the diverse and world-shaping stories told within their bindings. Today, I’m spotlighting 5 Black book designers/illustrators behind some of the best covers on view.
Luísa Diaz
Style: Graphic Art, Animals, Nature
Past Work: Good and Evil and Other Stories, At Last, A Place Between Dreams
Luísa Diaz had a signature high-art design style long before the current trend of “fine art on book covers” gained momentum. Her covers span a variety of genres, including memoir, historical fiction, and mystery.
A haunting, unforgettable collection of tales by Samanta Schweblin, winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature and three-time Booker Prize finalist.
Hillary D. Wilson
Style: Hyperrealistic Graphic Comics
Past Work: Blood at the Root, Legendborn Series
Hillary Wilson is a Durham-based illustrator with a background in medical illustration. Wilson blends her trained hand for detail with a love of color and fantasy to bring each book’s magic to life.
A teenager on the run from his past finds the family he never knew existed and the community he never knew he needed at an HBCU for the young, Black, and magical. Enroll in the debut of a fresh fantasy series unlike anything you’ve seen before.
Sarah Madden
Style: Graphic Pop Art
Past Work: Junie, Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry
Sarah Madden illustrated the cover of Erin Crosby-Eckstine’s Junie in collaboration with Art Director Elena Giavaldi. Madden’s illustration beautifully captures [at least] a thousand words from the rich novel in a single image.
A Good Morning America Club Pick
As the Civil War looms, a young girl must face a life-altering decision after awakening her sister’s ghost in this “poignant story of love, family and friendship [that] celebrates the power of liberation” (People).
Jenni Surasky
Style: High Art, Negative Space Type
Past Work: Piglet, Park Avenue
Piglet is one of my favorite recent reads, and the cover is mouthwatering, too. Designer and illustrator Jenni Surasky complements Noah Verrier’s gorgeous original artwork with simple but impactful typography.
Dominique Jones
Style: Graphic Text, Photo Manipulation, Realism
Past Work: Black Girl, Call Home; Old Enough, Love Can’t Feed You
You could say Dominique Jones is a connoisseur of ‘book-cover-worthy’ hair photography. Jones’ work on Black Girl, Call Home, and Haley Jakobson’s debut novel, Old Enough, captures the intimacy embedded in the culture of hair care.
