
There are emergency protocols and fail-safe maneuvers in book cover design just as there are in any semi-functioning government. If conflicting visions arise between designers, editors, marketing, authors, agents or publishers — the odds being decent that they will — the design process is helped along if the typography is easily readable (if not huge), if an accompanying image is clear (if tastefully ambiguous), and if the synthesis between the two can be reasonably expected to appeal to a total stranger’s sense of visual order and logic. It’s not a science, though it’s only occasionally an art.