Comments on: Book Cover Smackdown! ‘Vacation’ vs. ‘The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22′ vs. ‘Demon’s Door’

By: Dominic

Dominic — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 02:59:02 +0000

I'm tempted to say "Mammoth Book..." just because it's got Stephen Jones name on it, and the cover design is very strong, if a little dated, but "Vacation" is a very powerful and intriguing image, and would definitely make me pick up the book for a closer look, so I'll have to give it top spot.

"Demon's Door" doesn't do a darned thing for me, sorry to say.

By: Frag

Frag — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:57:18 +0000

I'd pick Vacation. I've seen similar designs in other genre's, but its a fresh approach for horror and so it jumps out more I think.

The Mammoth Book looks like an 80's horror movie poster. And not one of the memorable ones either, one of the "that's so 80's" ones.

Demon's Door is fine. It does its job, but I'd forgotten what it looked like by the time I finished writing about the other two.

By: sqt

sqt — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 02:02:53 +0000

I gotta go with Vacation. It just had the most immediate visual impact.

By: CBrachyrhynchos

CBrachyrhynchos — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:10:09 +0000

Anthologies are tricky because you have so much more information to pack on the cover. Mamoth Book does an excellent job of pulling you in with a striking image, and then giving the details in a readable way.

The minimalist design of Vacation is well-done, but not very novel. The image and lower-case serif typography is something of a standard, and there's little to mark whether I'm getting mystery, murder-thriller, or epidemic-thriller, and I'm puzzled on the relationship between the drain and the title.

Demon's Door isn't a bad cover, but it's not a great cover either.

By: Chad

Chad — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:55:35 +0000

I think Vacation is easily the best, but none of these are in my wheelhouse.

By: Aldo Ojeda

Aldo Ojeda — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:30:12 +0000

I think all this covers are pretty good. Appealing images, nice composition and colors. But vacation gets my vote, is a more subtle, appealing illustration. The others have a more "in you face" kind of picture, this one tell us lot of things without showing us much.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:00:26 +0000

Vacation - it's simple, a bit disgusting, and tells me that there will be blood. The other two just seem too cliche.

By: Dead

Dead — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:56:48 +0000

As a graphic designer and horror fanatic, it' an easy one for me.

The Mammoth Book is by far the most memorable, because it's both visually striking, and basically grabs you into looking at it.

While Vacation cover is great design, I've seen that approach for various novels in several genres before, so it looses impact.

Alas, the Demon's Door cover design isn't very memorable to me... I'd look past it on the shelves. It's just a bit generic.

My 2 cents.