Armchair BEA 2016 – Day 2 – Aesthetics #ArmchairBEA

Posted May 12, 2016 by Julie S. in ArmchairBEA / 4 Comments


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Aesthetic Concerns
The Books: How often do you judge a book by its cover? How often are you surprised by what you find? Do you strategize and make sure every book in your series has the same cover design (as far as you are able to) and type? How important is it for the visual art on the outside of the book to match or coordinate with the literature art on the inside?
The Blog: As a book blogger, in whatever form that takes, branding is important. Your colors, your fonts, your style of review, all of these things come together to make the “brand” of your blog – something that makes your reviews and posts and websites, all your various content, immediately recognizable to the people looking for you. What do you do to create a brand on your site? Do you think about these things?

Julie Review Avatar Julie:

Oh yea, we totally judge books by their covers!! I mean, we even have a feature about judging books by their covers.
I do judge books by their covers in that if a book has an amazing cover, and is lousy inside, I feel cheated.

I’m not so particular that my series covers must match, especially since I typically have the books in various media and so may not have the print copy of all books (though, that, sometimes bugs me).

As a book blogger, I definitely feel that our blog needs to be aesthetically pleasing in order for our readers to enjoy their time here. We recently redesigned to make the blog looks prettier and more professional, and I love how it looks now. We kept the same general color scheme, because we’re purple lovers after all, but the overall feel is sleek and calming to me now. I think that purple signature color is our brand, and the content that we have follows a theme in the naming (Chat Between Chapters, for example).

Lynnpic avatar Lynn:

Julie and I spend a lot of time talking about judging books covers. We even have two features on our blog, one is for book blind date, the other actually discussing various book covers. When it comes to physical book covers, I definitely judge. It’s going to take more than a blank page with a title to get my attention. I like a cover that hints at the contents. But with the move to digital, I don’t spend as much time looking at those covers, except for as thumbnail pictures on my Goodreads shelves or my e-reader. I can see the appeal of having all the books in a series lined up on my shelf, I don’t have the space for that sort of library in my apartment! One thing that does drive me crazy though is when publishers don’t follow the same design or size for books in a series. If you are going to buy the whole series as hardbacks, then they should at least be all the same size and be printed in the same direction!
Aesthetics are important to us, as bloggers and as readers. It’s important that websites are easy to read and pleasing to the eye. One of the aspects of our blog that I really love is the purple font. It is one of my favorite colors. But more so, it doesn’t cause eye strain while I’m reading it. We also try to use the Chat naming convention for our features. I think that really ties the whole blog together.
What do you think about book aethetics and our blog redesign?

Posted May 12, 2016 by Julie S. in ArmchairBEA / 4 Comments

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4 responses to “Armchair BEA 2016 – Day 2 – Aesthetics #ArmchairBEA”

  2. Ramona

    I wish I could say that I don’t care about book covers, but the truth is … I do! Of course I do, lol 🙂 I’ve been known to buy really bad books because of pretty covers and pass on really good ones on account of not liking the covers. I’m trying to reform though :))

    • Lynn

      I can understand both of those decisions, Ramona! I’ve been known to be attracted to shiny covers, myself!