If we were in 1980, talking about the relevance of a book cover design would have been simpler, or at least I think so. There is, like Chipp Kidd says, something very special about a book, the way it smells is one of those things, but I bet the most important of those things is by far the cover design.
The illustration above shows a very original cover for El Quijote de la Mancha, I got it from a site called Lobulo design . Since the book is a classic, and people will know what it is about, resources must be found to get into people's minds and wake their interest
When you see a book in a book store, the cover speaks to you in ways much more diverse than just "buy me". whenever I am reading a book I close it every now and then to look at the cover and it gives me great satisfaction when those things that the cover said to me before I started reading, are confirmed by the content of the book.
I have read a couple of the books that Kidd talks about in the video, and mine had a different cover, it was equally beautiful and appealing to me, but strangely enough it told me different things about the book, and I am convinced that my opinion and enjoyment of the book was very much influenced by the design of the cover. The book was My Name is Red by Ohran Pamuk, and unlike the story Kidd tells on his cover, I was more attracted by the mysterious art of the courts illustrators than by the story about a murder.
Even these days, when a lot of what we read comes in the form of a pdf file, we cannot underestimate the importance of a good book cover design, and I think in general, and more than before, images still speak to us and take us places.
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