Every year when the end of December is in sight, I like to spend a little time looking through the covers for books coming out in the new year. It’s always interesting to spot trends going on in design. Covers are a big part of the marketing of a book, and this is especially try in YA — trends for book cover design tend to come and go in waves, hoping to capitalize off what looks are doing particularly well.

As interesting to me is seeing what sorts of design trends or micro-trends or similarities are similar to those which have come in years past. For 2015, as seen in the last couple of years, there’s an abundance of birds appearing on covers, either as the main image of the cover or as part of a bigger image. I’ve skipped including a section on font-driven covers or covers where the title takes up more than have the cover real estate because not only has it been a trend for the last two years or so, but it’s so common that pulling them together would take a long, long time.

This is a two-part post, with part two coming on Thursday, as there are a lot of interesting and unique trends and commonalities worth looking at and thinking about. Some covers fall into only one category, while others have found themselves across multiple trend groups.

I’d love to know if you are aware of other covers fitting any of these categories. Because this would otherwise be too long a pair of posts, I’m not including book descriptions, but rather, links to the titles on Goodreads so you can check them out for yourself and, if you want, add them to your to-be-read lists. Hopefully, some of these books will be new ones to get on your radar.

Put a Bird on It


I feel like I’ve made the same Portlandia joke in a few posts, but it still stands. Birds continue to be popular on covers of YA books.

Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

The Conspiracy of Us by Maggie Hall

Dearest by Althea Kontis

Delicate Monsters by Stephanie Kuehn

Fig by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

Hold Tight, Don’t Let Go by Laura Rose Wagner

If You Were Me by Sam Hepburn

Little Bit by Alex Wheatle

Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

Paperweight by Meg Haston

Positively Beautiful by Wendy Mills (I’m not sure why I can only find a draft cover for this)

Save Me by Jenny Elliott

A Sense of the Infinite by Hilary T. Smith

The Summer After You and Me by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski

Tether by Anna Jarzab

The Last Leaves Falling by Sarah Benwell

Things I’ll Never Say edited by Ann Angel

Until the Beginning by Amy Plum

When My Heart Was Wicked by Tricia Stirling

Legs


One body part there’s a lot of in 2015? Legs. Some of them are covered and some of them aren’t. But legs!

All The Rage by Courtney Summers

Jesse’s Girl by Miranda Kenneally

Joyride by Anna Banks

One of the Guys by Lisa Aldin

Seriously Wicked by Tina Connolly

Tracers by J. J. Howard

The Truth About My Success by Dyan Sheldon

Tunnel Vision by Susan Adrian

Wrong About The Guy by Claire LaZebnik

Post-It Notes


I’m fond of using post-its, almost to a fault, and I think they make for a nice look on a book cover.

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand

The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things by Ann Aguirre

That “Instagram” Look


A number of cover images are being filtered in a very Instagram-style way, not to mention they’re styled either like selfies or the kind of pictures you’d see scrolling through a teen’s Instagram account. I’m pretty sure there are more covers that would fit this Instagram-y trend, but I’m limiting to the obvious ones.

Anything Could Happen by Will Walton

Faking Perfect by Rebecca Phillips

Finding Paris by Joy Preble

First There Was Forever by Juliana Romano

The Law of Loving Others by Kate Axelrod

Like It Never Happened by Emily Adrian

Love is in the Air by A. Destiny and Alex Kahler

Making Pretty by Corey Ann Haydu

Stand Off by Andrew Smith

We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

Devils


There may only be 2 of them, but I find this cover commonality amusing and enjoyable. I think the Schreiber cover is especially clever.

Con Academy by Joe Schreiber

Hellhole by Gina Damico

Thorns and Vines


There’s something crawling along the sides or centers of these covers, be they thorns or vines or flowery twigs.

About A Girl by Sarah McCarry

Blood Will Tell by April Henry

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

The Girl at Midnight by Melissa Grey

The Glass Arrow by Kristen Simmons

Poppy in the Field by Mary Hooper

The Ruby Circle by Richelle Mead

Tear You Apart by Sarah Cross

The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma

Willowgrove by Kathleen Peacock

Light-up Place Signs


I can’t wait for two of these three covers to be continuously confused next year because they’re so similar.

Finding Paris by Joy Preble

I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

Kissing in America by Margo Rabb

Fingerprints


While there are a couple of noteworthy covers featuring hands, I think the fingerprints on covers is more interesting to look at.

Emmy & Oliver by Robin Benway

If You Were Me by Sam Hepburn

Soulprint by Megan Miranda

Cityscapes


This has been a trend for a while, probably because having a nice cityscape on a cover feels like it’s action-adventure or a good post-apocalyptic/dystopian story.

After the Red Rain by Barry Lyga, Peter FAcinelli, and Robert DeFranco

All Fall Down by Ally Carter

Bright Lights, Dark Nights by Stephen Emond

City 1 by Greg Rosenblum

City Love by Susane Colasanti

The Conspiracy of Us by Maggie Hall

Deceptive by Emily Lloyd-Jones

Feral Pride by Cynthia Leitich Smith (I love that this is the Austin skyline — I’ve never seen that on a book cover before!)

Fire Fall by Bethany Frenette

Firefight by Brandon Sanderson

If You Were Me by Sam Hepburn

Infected by Sophie Littlefield

Invasion by Galaxy Craze

One Stolen Thing by Beth Kephart

Quake by Patrick Carman

Rook by Sharon Cameron

Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older

Skyscraping by Cordelia Jensen

The Rise and Fall of a Theater Geek by Seth Rudetsky

Tracers by J. J. Howard (When your cover is made up of a ton of images collaged together, you’re going to fit into a ton of trends)

The Wrong Side of Right by Jenn Marie Thorne

We’re on a Boat


The popular mode of transportation on YA covers in 2015 is the boat.

The boat.

Love, Fortunes, and Other Disasters by Kimberly Karalius

The Nightmare Charade by Mindee Arnett

Tangled Webs by Lee Bross

The Trouble with Destiny by Lauren Morrill

Planes Aren’t Disappearing Though


Maybe it’s just popular to have a mode of transportation on a cover, since it seems as though planes are doing well, too. When you don’t want a bird, why not use a plane?

Black Dove, White Raven by Elizabeth Wein

Breakout by Kevin Emerson

Deceptive by Emily Lloyd-Jones

Promposal by Rhonda Helms

Sophomore Year is Greek to Me by Meredith Zeitlin

Floating Heads on a Blue Background

Let’s end the first post in this two-part series with one of the weirder commonalities. This isn’t a trend, per se, but it caught my eye as I was looking through covers. I can’t wait to see how quickly these two become confused by readers and those who work with readers because they’re both weird and weirdly similar.

Playlist for the Dead by Michelle Falkoff

In A World Just Right by Jen Brooks