An interesting blurb from author J.T. Dutton’s Freaked wraps up its summary in a curious way: “A joyous tale of a teen Dead Head.”
It goes without saying that Freaked’s cover is very different from most YA contemporary novels’ covers. I’m such a sucker for titles in uppercase type that work with the cover’s design and not against it. The broken dissolving letters and vibrant splash of colors work beautifully together to create this sort of catastrophic effect, complemented by the impact of its title. The cover looks like a suspended moment that’s on the forefront of a disaster.
Lately I’ve noticed more and more titles that are rotated clockwise 90 degrees. I think with Freaked’s cover it works, but others walk a fine line between being unique and being distracting, like The Demon King. (another very gorgeous cover)
Interestingly enough, Freaked’s title is rotated in a way that if I was searching along book spines in a bookstore, I wouldn’t have to readjust to read its title, either (whereas The Demon King is rotated in the opposite direction). I’m not sure if this was the cover designer’s intention or not, but it’s certainly convenient.
Freaked’s cover impresses me in a way that I want to find out what’s so broken about Scotty, the novel’s drug-abusing protagonist with 99 problems. I can only assume that being Freaked is one of them.
