They say you can’t choose a book by its cover. Fair enough. But sometimes, it is impossible not to be drawn to the wit of a well-made cover. A confluence of patterns and colours, a simple graphic element, the font, something in it speaks to us, drawing us towards the story itself. Here are some book cover designers whose art you should have on your radar.
Prabha Mallya
Known for her animal-centric book designs, Prabha Mallya is a visual designer and a comic artist. To align her artwork with the visceral and layered world of Nilanjana Roy's The Wildings Prabha’s design approach relied heavily on manual experimentation, featuring physical techniques such as constructing, cutting, taping, splotching, stonewashing and layering. Her design process relies heavily on a highly textured and iterative methodology rather than a purely digital or formulaic blueprint.
Antra K
A graduate of Royal College of Art, Antra K is an award-winning independent book cover designer. Her design process begins with a meticulous reading of the complete manuscript or play to fully grasp the book's core narrative. The designer explores the cultural and narrative themes of the book. For example, when Antra designed the cover for The Muslim Vanishes by Saeed Naqvi, her process heavily prioritized mind mapping and discovering visual paths that mirrored the author's precise, witty tone.
L: Prabha Mallya R: Antra K
Aarushi Menon
Growing up around her mother's colorful and heavily patterned style, Aarushi Menon is a prominent book cover and graphic designer based in Los Angeles. For the special edition of Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang, her design concept focused on using specialized effects, an intricate endpaper map and a striking typewriter illustration to match the story's coding-like magic system. Aarushi’s design process is an iterative exploration of typography, intricate graphic elements and gritty textures.
Bhavi Mehta
Bhavi Mehta is an editorial book-cover designer based in Mumbai. She combines digital tools with analogue techniques like paper-cutting and physical scanning, to build several initial rough mockups before narrowing them down. For Vivek Shanbhag's novel Ghachar Ghochar, Bhavi focused on the novel’s themes of food, history and nostalgia. Expressing it through a stained dinner plate crawling with ants. The final minimalist white cover uses that unsettling domestic image to evoke the book’s quiet claustrophobia.
Aarushi Menon
Bhavi Mehta
Devangana Dash
Award-winning book designer and illustrator Devangana Dash’s design philosophy centers on restraint and deep respect for the original narrative. For Goodbye Freddie Mercury by Nadia Akbar, Devangana focused on giving the novel the feel of a cult story, capturing its rock ’n’ roll energy, drugs, love triangles, mystery and murky politics. She draws major inspiration from a range of sources including folk art, different genres of music and Urdu poetry to build a book's visual identity.
Samanta Batra Mehta
Driven by re-purposing collected antiquarian objects, maps and vintage materials, Samanta is a mixed-media artist based in New York. For her work on book covers and mixed-media pieces, Samanta integrates hand-cut illustrations, delicate line work, and nostalgic, layered compositions that echo themes of identity and the past. This intimate approach translates into minimalist yet emotionally evocative visuals suited for literary projects like Avni Doshi's Girl in White Cotton.
Devangana Dash
Samanta Batra Mehta
Malavika P.C.
Malavika P.C.
Based in Chennai, Malavika’s book cover design philosophy is deeply interdisciplinary, intuitive and tactile. For the book cover of Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings grew out of an earlier coming soon promotional poster that featured chapter names along insect bodies. After reading the almost-final manuscript, she adapted elements from that original poster, specifically a textured, papery feel and integrated recurring motifs of wings and dreamy human-insect figures.
Words Shruti Verma
Date 14.10.2026