There’s an irony in saying not to judge a book by its cover. Because we all literally do it. We wander through bookstores and grab copies with vivid covers that grab our attention. Or at least scroll through Amazon and click covers with the boldest typefaces.

In his 2012 TED Talk, Chip Kidd describes designing the cover for Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. He went to the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, bought a book on dinosaurs, and traced an image of a T-rex skeleton. What he came up with ended up being the icon for a series of blockbuster films based on Crichton’s books.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC0KxNeLp1E

He did so by asking himself the question: what do the stories look like? This allowed Kidd to get the essence of the story on to the cover of the book. “A book designer give form to content,” he said. Book covers give us a first impression of what we’re about to read. After all, we read a book’s cover—just a lot more quickly than the book itself.

There aren’t many competitions that judge books by their covers. But the Professional Association for Design (AIGA) does host the 50 Books | 50 Covers competition each year. This competition recognizes 50 different book cover designs by AIGA members.