Plain: The title is set in Orator, a monospaced font whose overwhelming virtue is that it is unadorned and thus easy to read aloud. Hence, the name “orator.” It’s plain. It’s boring. And it’s easy to let that notion mold one’s opinion that it is not attractive and unsuited for a glamorous responsibility like the title of a book. But it is! The author and subtitle are set in Bank Gothic, an all caps font, which complements the title nicely.
Dramatic: The image. I took a striking photograph of a bridge, changed it to grayscale, posterized it in four steps, cropped it to center the tower in the middle of the cover, and let the cables radiate in a wonderful rhythm to the edges. Then I applied one color to the entire photo, et voilà. The only color besides Prussian blue and the white of the paper is the yellow arc of the publisher’s logo. A powerful cover.
