Judging a book by its cover, an interview with a graphic designer

He's got his game face on.

It's something that we all do. Maybe it's wrong or shallow, but we really do judge on appearances. Well, the appearances of books at least.

We do that slow shuffle down our favorite book-aisle, skimming through the titles with our heads bent slightly to the side (so we can actually read the book spines). When one finally strikes our fancy, we pull that book off the shelf to check out the cover, then turn it over and read the synopsis... well sometimes we do that. Other times after checking out the cover we put the book back and start that odd looking shuffle all over again. Most of us don't realize we're doing it, just something about the book wasn't interesting anymore so we forget about it and move on. 

We are visual people, and that's a fact that book publishers are well aware of. A good graphic designer can help turn a great book into a bestseller.

I want to give ya'll an inside scoop on how graphic designers do their job, and to do that I decided to interview Bruce Gore, the art director for Howard Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.