The animal computer book cover series by O’Reilly is consistent, unique, memorable, and beautiful. The brainchild of Edie Freedman, now O’Reilly’s creative director, the books have become as recognizable as the Dummies series, at least to their own more self confident audience.
I’ve long admired the covers for the beautiful illustrations and the strong and well balanced white space and solid color block design program that houses them. The animals started as 19th century wood engravings, but most are now drawn by one of O’Reilly’s own editors who is also a part-time illustrator.
For more information and background on the O’Reilly animal book covers, see Animal Magnetism: Making O’Reilly Animals and Edie Freedman’s own Origin of Species: A History of O’Reilly Animals.
Discovered at the last minute: Design Your Own O’Reilly Book Cover. Here’s mine.
This one was my all time favourite. Originally it was better, it was a bunny with a bass drum. I think energizer got to them, because now its that one. I checked to see if there was another book about Mindstorms that had the Drumbunny, but no love.