The winners of the 3rd Academy of British Cover Design Awards

Committed to making the awards to be as inclusive as possible with work that traditionally gets overlooked by other competitions despite being highly original, well executed and relevant ABCD revealed the best book cover designs in 10 categories.

In the Children’s category, the winner was Waterstones Book of the Year in 2015, The Fox and the Star (Particular Books), designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith who picked up her second award in four months for her creation. In the Young Adult category, Kate Gaughran’s design for Asking for It by Louise O’Neill (Quercus) was the most popular choice, the Sci-Fi/Fantasy award was won by Ben Summers’ composition for A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar (Hodder & Stoughton), beating off competition from: Speak by Louisa Hall (Orbit), in the Mass Market category, designer Joanna Thomson won the award for her work on Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum (Mantle) and the award for the particularly strong Literary Fiction category was taken by Jon Gray for his livery for Memoirs of a Dipper by Nell Layshon (Fig Tree).  

The Crime/Thriller category was secured by Penguin’s Richard Bravery for his design of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by David Shafer, the 12-strong Non-Fiction shortlist was topped by Claire Skeats’ work on Egg by Blanche Vaughan (W&N), the Series Design gong was taken by Bookseller Rising Star alumni James Jones, for his art direction of Vintage’s Arthur Ransome series and Sinem Erkas, emerged victorious in the Classics/Reissues category for her adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (Orion).

Almost 1,000 entries were submitted to the ABCD’15 awards, with 10 judges whittling them down to the shortlisted entries. For more info click here.