John Gall

John Gall
Vice President and Art Director for Vintage and Anchor Books, an imprint of Knopf (within Random House Inc.)

Gall is the art director for 200 book cover designs each year, all of which are 5-3/16 by 8". He has designed many book cover that truly are unique, interesting, and inspirational, even with the restricted size and format on all his books.

He is probably one of the overlooked book cover designer, especially when working with Chip Kidd, who is considered one of the best designers! But after seeing Gall's work, I can't really say who is better. They're both great.

The book Gall's holding is particularly interesting! After many tries on the design, he finally used the original spine of the book as the cover because that was the only thing he liked. He tried it, and hey, it works!

Another book cover he designed was bizarre. Gall actually used the back cover as the front cover and vice versa. If I saw that book in the store, I think I'd flip it back to the front (in this case, back...)
Watch this video. It shows a video interview of John Gall by Barnes and Noble.
(Also shows 5 other interviews with book designers!)

Gall gives his 5 rules on book cover designs:
1. Read the book.
2. Inspiration is everywhere
3. Be thrifty with fonts
4. Practice sound time management
5. Rules are meant to be broken

Great tips! But according to his last rule, I guess we don't really have to follow rules 1-4...