The UK’s largest bookstore chain revealed this week that they have decided to give George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series a brand new look. The brief Waterstones gave to designers was rather open and basically allowed the design team to follow their own initiative, the covers were to be ‘beautiful, epic and … hint at the world George R. R. Martin has created’.
Richard Augustus, the senior designer for the project explains that: “George’s books cover so much – family, relationships, politics, war – and we wanted the new look to reflect this epic scale. A key part of the brief was that the books should also appeal to readers who may have heard of or seen Game of Thrones, the HBO show based on the series, but aren’t familiar with the books yet.”
Here is the result:
I have to say that I’m not so sure that Waterstones have pulled of what they’ve looked to achieve here? To me, the books look like they are trying very hard to distance themselves from the fantasy genre; so much so that they actually end up looking almost like non-fiction self-help books or travel guides. Many, many years ago Game of Thrones had a Robert Jordan-esque cover (below left). Some marketing professional must have then realised that this book would likely appeal to historical fantasy fans, so took away the fantasy elements of the covers and made them plainer (below centre) and when Game of Thrones was televised they gave the books new covers so that fans of the show would recognise the books (below right).
I always feel bad criticising, or not being able to appreciate, an artists work, because it is obvious a lot of work went into designing them: “From start to finish, the covers took around four months to complete and it was very much a team effort, with four designers contributing to the final designs. We produced dozens of visuals before settling on the final covers – playing around with different shots, the scale of the images, looking at wide open landscapes or focusing down onto intriguing details. We then started to think specifically about how the type should work, how it might need to be adapted to work on eBook, and what the finishes would be on the physical edition.”
To take my favourite cover of the lot, the one for the first book, A Game of Thrones, I just don’t see that it does the Epic scale of the series justice:
To me, those rocky mountains don’t seem to suggest much in the way of action, adventure, politics, twists or turns. They just seem to be mountains – certainly there is no hint of the scale of the wall or the fact that within these mountains are White Walkers building in strength.
All that in mind, I’m aware that covers are a very personal thing. A cover I can’t appreciate, another may find intriguing and truly irresistible. Additionally, I guess it won’t hurt the series any, because these covers are set to be published alongside the existing ones rather than replace them. For those who are interested, they’ll be out on 27th of March and can be pre-ordered on Waterstones Online of by going into a store directly.
