8 little-known book cover designs that should be classics

A new book by designer Jesse Reed gives unsung book covers their due.

In the age of fickle online trends, font horoscopes, and tiny mics, what room is there to engage with the humble mass-market paperback of yesteryear? 

A new book, Second Hand, dusts off should-be-classic book covers that have largely been forgotten, and pulls out new design lessons from old tricks. Jesse Reed, the book’s author and cofounder of the design studio Order, compiled images of hundreds of secondhand modernist book covers and organized them according to publisher, year, and designer (some of which remain unknown or uncredited). Reed sourced the book covers himself and took the photos over the span of about a year and a half.