Book Cover design by Pinaki De

Audiogyan

Today I have Pinaki De with us on Audiogyan. He is a well-known and multiple award-winning graphic illustrator-designer who regularly works for leading publishing companies like Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and more... He has designed book covers for over 500 books to date. A Charles Wallace Trust fellow has Ph.D. in comics theory. Pinaki juggles his creative work with academics, as he has a day job as an Associate Professor of English in Kolkatta. You can find more about his work and bio on the links given in the show notes.

1. Can you give start by telling us a brief history of book cover design? Did the first-ever book had cover? Was the first cover made for identification or protection?
2. What all are functions of book cover today?
3. Do you need to read the book to design the cover?
4. How do the writer and the book cover designer collaborate in arriving at the cover design? Can you give an example of any famous book cover you designed to explain the process?
5. What is the long term future of book cover design? With thumbnails for famous movie posters created by artificial intelligence in Netflix, how would you envision, iBooks, Kindle changing the trajectory of book cover design?
6. How true is, "never judge a book by its cover". especially when you have designed more than 500 book covers.