A Gallery of Book Covers for the Southern Reach Trilogy

I've always enjoyed good book design. Covers, in particular, have interested me every since I bought a stack of Ace scifi paperbacks because I was thrilled with the cover imagery back when I was working at my first bookstore job in the late 1960's. 

As I grew older and understood more of what went into designing and publishing a book, I began to understand that sometimes the designers were only creating a cover image that they thought would sell the book regardless of whether the image had anything to do with the story.

The covers for Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy of books (Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance) have caught my attention because they really do reflect the story that the author has written. Published by a literary publisher (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) who rarely venture into genre publishing, the designs for the American covers are vibrant and strange using a single thematic image for each book. Created by noted artist Eric Nyquist, they get several things right: the size of the story/theme, the color palette for all three books is spot on with the mood and the single image represents a telling moment in each individual novel 

Mr. Vandermeer has put together a Flickr gallery of cover's from different countries (U.S., UK, Spain, etc). I am particularly fond of the UK covers as I think they capture some of the idea of structure in each of the books. Couldn't find the name of the designer, but if anyone who is reading this knows, please email me so I can update this post.

The Japanese covers are fabulous with just the right mix of lurid/strange and formal design. They are my favorites of all of the cover designs.