All book covers sit somewhere on the metaphorical continuum, because covers must convey the essence of an idea.
When self-pubbed authors commission a cover designer, apparently one thing that often happens is the author asks for an illustration of a scene. But book covers are not for scene illustration. Especially when a huge proportion of book sales happen online, a book cover must convey an idea via a small-dimension image. An illustrated scene is too busy.
Sometimes designers are charged with the task of representing the un-representable. Take nihilism, for instance — a worldview which holds that nothing has meaning. Each of the cover designers below have stuck with black as the dominant ‘colour’, but have also found their own way of representing the idea:
What do these covers represent? Again with the black. Readers understand the vibe if not the content, yet:
Symbols of love (and break up):
Symbolically wrapped books:
Pencils:
Matches:
Body parts represented with fruit:
Below are further examples of book covers featuring symbolic and metaphorical imagery and design. Notice how many of them are also minimalist (though not always).
