Reading the usual end of the year statistics, we found out that, in 2017, only six of ten Italians read a book for pleasure and not for studying or working purpose. Let’s go beyond the mere statistics and let’s take a look at the editorial market and one of its main gasoline: graphics.
The first impact of readers with a book is the cover, or rather the image. Covers are constantly under studies by experts. For example, some newspapers like “The New Yorker”, periodically dedicate their first page to a book cover. We have international competitions for the best cover of the year and catalogues of the most beautiful and interesting cover ever published (see the Book Cover Archive, http://bookcoverarchive.com). There’s a lot of talk and publicity around book covers, most of all because they say a lot about graphics trend. For example, in 2016 new fonts replaced a traditional cover style. It happens that some covers have a strong impact on audience and readers, sometimes thanks to new graphic characteristics, able to attract the attention on that specific cover, among a world of similar books.
It is important to say that there’s a branch of the editorial market that is growing up a lot. We are talking about books for teenagers. Boys and girls have access to innovative material thanks to app for smartphone, Kindle books, shop on line…. The specific graphics for these books developed a lot, making them more and more intriguing and captivating.
Finally, we have a new creative product for kids, the silent books, able to inspire creativity and imagination. They have images only, and kids and parents can create their own fantastic story.
We can say that graphics, in all its forms, offers an important support to the editorial market, against every not encouraging statistical datas.
