Top Ten Tuesday: Cool Typography

Posted February 3, 2026 by Nicky in General / 50 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is about interesting cover typography… which is a tricky topic for me, because I’m a very non-visual person! That said, it also sounds fun, so let’s see what I can do.

The cover of Wolf Worm, by T. Kingfisher. The title is in a large white serif font on a black background, but two flowers are poking through the letters of "wolf" and a twig in the centre of the cover has the various stages of growth and pupation of a fly dangling from it, as well as what might be a catterpillar with parasites on its back, reflecting the horror themes in the book. This twig also hangs in front of the word "worm". The plant roots that spread out below the title are red and look like veins. The cover of This Will Be Fun, by E.B. Asher. The cover has a banner going back and forth across it from top to bottom, almost like a ribbon. The title is written on the horizontal sections of the banner, split into three sections. There is also a sword diagonally across the cover, the banner weaving behind and in front of it. The curves of the banner are accented with roses, facets of gemstones, sprigs of ferns and in one spot, a tent, a castle, and a coffee mug. At the bottom of the banner, silhouettes of a man and a woman are sat in front of a large rock. The cover of A River Enchanted, by Rebecca Ross. The central feature of the cover is a river running across it. The water is varying shades of blue and the title looks like it is floating on the water, the letters not quite all on the same line and water sometimes covering parts of a letter. On the water are also yellow petals, matching the yellow of the author's name. Above and below the river, on the corners of the cover, there are purple flowers and thistle flowers on a dark background. The cover of Love, Theoretically, by Ali Hazelwood. The cover is a bright orange yellow, with bookshelves just visible. In the foreground are a man and a woman, kissing. The man is wearing a polo shirt and on his lower arm, there is a tattoo of some kind of molecular structure. The woman is in a bright pink dress and her long braid swings out behind her. The first word of the title, "love", is in a sans-serif font, but the "theoretically" is in a more graphic, handwriting-like font. The impression is of some kind of ambiguity (it's love, theoretically), or a sign off on a letter. The cover of Paris Daillencourt Is About To Crumble, by Alexis Hall. The main feature of the cover is a larger than life layer cake. Each layer is a different colour of the rainbow and each word of the title is in a different layer. The cake is finished with white frosting and on top has a purple decoration of the London skyline, clearly showing Westminster, the London Eye, Big Ben, Tower Bridge, and the Gherkin. In front of cake, bracketing it on either side, are two men. The man on the left looks perhaps skeptical of the one on the left, who has his hands in his pockets and his shoulders raised. All of it, cake and men, are on top of a small table that looks like it's covered in a lace doily.

The cover of Radiant Black by Higging, Costa, Chen, Lafuente, and Carey. The lower two thirds of the cover show the launch of something, or someone toward space. White clouds spread out at the bottom, the sun just peeking out from behind them. A vapour trail follows the rising black and white figure as it heads toward the black of space that is at the very top of the cover. The title itself is on two lines, aligned so that the second A in "radiant" aligns with that in "black", which is also upside down. Between the two As is a circle, halved by the blue line that runs between the two words. The cover of Tied To You, by Chelliace. The cover features two young men on a bed. One is lying back with his head on a pillow, while the other leans over him, holding his hand to kiss it. It looks like there is some size difference between them, implying perhaps a gap in their ages. The words of the title are in a curly font, and the curl on the extends out to form the crossbar on the t of "to", whereas the Y in "you" reaches up and hooks into a curl at the end of "tied". The words are literally tied together. The cover of Copper Script, by KJ Charles. Two copper coloured silhouettes stand in front of a dark blue background. One is a man in a trenchcoat, wearing a hat and a suit under his coat. The other is a man in a more working class outfit, with a cap. Around the edges of the cover is lineart and some lanterns, all in a vaguely art deco style. The blue background uses different shades to show a city skyline behind the men, and in the centre, a pen nib. The title itself is written in copperscript, with some additional decorative flourishes. The cover of An Unkindness of Magicians, by Kat Howard. This cover stands out as it is all in white. The background is flat white, with white branches reaching from the left to the right of the cover. The branches are mostly bare, but there are some leaves coming off them. These leaves and the ends of the branches weave through the also white letters of the title. The whole is very otherworldly and somewhat haunting. The cover of Planting Clues, by David J. Gibson. The cover has a green background and the left and right sides of the cover are covered in darker green etchings of different plants. There are flowers, different kinds of leaves, a few mushrooms, even some enlarged microscopic images of pollen in the lower left corner. The title has the word "planting" somewhat set into the greenery and then "clues" is made to look as if it is on a piece of crime scene tape, cut through the middle. This seems especially appropriate given the tagline "how plants solve crimes".

I make no promises about the quality of the books, because I’ve only read four of them and only loved two. All the same, these covers jumped out at me as doing interesting things with the typography (like following the layers of the cake, the echoed upside-down A, the letters of Tied to You being tied together, the broken crime-scene tape).

For my money, the coolest is An Unkindness of Magicians, though: it’s a pretty plain font, but somehow it’s making that pale-on-pale look work, and the branches are growing into the letters… a lot of the time bright colours draw the eye, but this cover draws the eye by eschewing colour, including in the title text.

I’m very curious to see what others have unearthed, and what other people feel looks cool!

ETA: See also my post today about the importance of book covers!

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50 responses to “Top Ten Tuesday: Cool Typography”

  4. Tammy

    These are great examples! I like the way a bunch of your choices have the letters weaving in and out with other elements in the cover. Like A River Enchanted and Wolf Worm.

    Reply
    • Nicky

      Yeah, I hadn’t actually noticed A River Enchanted before somehow? And then I was looking at my saved book covers having a think and realised — the letters are in the water!

      Reply
    • Nicky

      The subtitle totally makes me imagine little Sherlock Holmes plants, I must admit. (Sadly it’s more how botany can help solve crimes, but it was reasonably interesting too.)

      Reply
    • Nicky

      Yeah, it’s a really cool design. I’m glad I looked closer at it and realised that the letters were “in the water” too, I hadn’t registered that detail at all.

      Reply
    • Nicky

      I had an older (self-published?) version of Clockwork Boys which I found less cool, but the UK versions that have been released lately are really great.

      Reply
    • Nicky

      Very sure! I am in fact completely aphantasic, so I have no “mind’s eye” at all, and am completely unable to picture anything or have visual memories. It can be quite the limitation in visual tasks like comparing two images — I have to describe them to myself if I need to remember details, like a list of the image contents.

      Reply

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