Cover Masterclass: Lindsey Davis

They say never judge a book by its cover but with an increasing amount of books in the marketplace you’d be forgiven for letting it influence you. Publishers put a wealth of resource and research into creating the perfect package for a book, so ignoring them would surely hurt their feelings!

Lindsey Davies has written over twenty historical crime novels set in Ancient Rome and with such a lengthy backlist it’s always a challenge to keep them looking fresh and modern whilst retaining their own style and uniformity. After all, who doesn’t love collecting all of their favourite authors books and displaying them proudly at home in a complete set.

We asked Emma Rogers, the Graphic Designer behind the redesign of Lindsey Davis’ backlist how she went about creating such beautiful covers:
‘When I was approached by Random House to repackage the Lindsey Davis backlist, I wanted to create a fresh new look without losing the sense of mystery and place that the original series style portrayed. By making use of one object tied to the context of the story combined with a vibrant but mysterious colour palette, a simple and strong new photographic series style was achieved.

Typographically the series have not been radically changed, just modernised and sharpened by sticking to a monochrome palette for the author name and a title colour that works in harmony with the new colour schemes.

Overall, the series has been brought bang up to date to work competitively within the ever evolving crime and mystery genre.’

To find out more about Emma Rogers head to her Website, we bet she’s behind some of your favourite book covers.

Interested in cover art? Check out our posts on International Cover Design and how the cover of The Never List was designed.