As the final days of 2010 wind down, many websites and blogs are busy compiling their “Best of” lists for the year, including line-ups for the best in book cover design. Anis Shivani at The Huffington Post has selected 21 “cool” covers and spoken with the authors and designers to get a feel for the creative process that goes into designing a successful cover. Many of the titles selected are by lesser-known authors, but the design quality of several of the selections is top-notch. The cover created for The Line by Olga Grushin plays on the contrast of color and gray scale, positive and negative space, the austere and the lyrical to create a simple, yet intriguing cover. “Everyone immediately loved this one…A perfect cover should capture the feel of the book, and this one does so wonderfully: there is the contrast between the grim reality and the world of fantasy, hope and beauty; there are individual stories, each one unique; and I read a Nabokov reference into the butterflies, which makes me even happier,” comments Grushin. Read more…