Bibliomimicry

I posted some time ago about what I called peek-a-boo book covers. The trend has not died down, and if anything the mimicry has grown stronger. Here are nine that I saw in about a minute in a recent trip to Subtext Books in downtown Saint Paul:










The only variation among these is that most set the type in all caps while a few use upper and lower case. The majority use sans serif type, but a few use serif. Almost all overlay art onto parts of the letters, except one, which runs black type over fairly dark background art so the type is almost purposefully hard to read.

And all of that similarity was confounding enough, but then I noticed these two covers, which are don't fit the general pattern I've been tracking, but have their own little style club with white backgrounds, severe thick-and-thin modern type, and organically shaped, silhouetted artwork:


Wow. That is an amazing coincidence.

(Note: These two were not side by side in the store to start with.)