The Emotional Power That Lures Behind a Black and White Book Cover

Have you ever wondered what kind of colour or palette would suit your story best?

It is not a matter of what is your favourite colour anymore. It is a matter of what will this colour make people feel when they see the cover for the first time. What are they going to relate that colour with? An emotion. A genre. A story. Are they going to be able to feel that colour and align your story with it? Colour is pure emotion. And we, as humans, are purely emotional.

So what happens when we decide to strip that colour palette and go for black and white? In my humble opinion, black & white deepens feelings. So there is something magical about it, isn't there?

The way that the message the book cover sends to its reader can be so differentiated in such a wide, varying way fascinates me. It can be a call to calmness, but also to nostalgia, apathy, restlessness, and even terror. It also gives the cover a sense of depth and intention. There’s something about book covers with a black and white background picture with a minimal title layout that makes me fall in love with every cover using this combination. It may be a call to its simplicity & delicacy and its powerful intention. I can find a stack of brightly coloured books screaming and just look away and get allured to the simplest, rawest cover.

I collected some of my favourite covers that meet this winning combination. It is also a wonderful exercise to study them and find the details that make these covers work, both for their framing and their direct or indirect relationship with the title, their story, and other elements added to the cover.

Theatre, film and television actress Kim Hunter once said “I think it's because it was an emotional story, and emotions come through much stronger in black and white. Colour is distracting in a way, it pleases the eye but it doesn't necessarily reach the heart.”

On Eart We're Briefly Gorgeus by Ocean Vuong

The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells

This Radical Land by Daegan Miller & The Immoralist by Andre Gide

I hope these examples made you fall in love with black and white use in covers. If you’re not sure if that’s the right choice for your book, feel free to reach me or check my other resources about Self-Publishing and Book Cover Design. If you still feel lost about your path to bringing to life the book cover of your dreams, I also offer one-to-one consultations, so if that is something you’d be interested in, drop me an email or contact me through our client application form!