Ever heard that old saying, “you can’t judge a book by its cover”? Basically it implies that looks can be deceiving. Is that 80 year old man decrepit or is he some secret serial killer that will off me if I attempt to go help him with his groceries? Those girl scouts may appear to just be selling cookies, but if you mention the right words to them you can walk out of that Vons parking lot with a nice sack of high quality crack. Just to drive the point home I’ll clue you in on a little secret, that man who was recently voted into office is actually a highly emotional boy-child from the future dressed in a high tech skin suit.

So one day around 3 in the afternoon I was sitting in discussion for CAT 125. Next thing I know I’m being told that this ancient saying (you can’t  judge a book…) is actually wrong. I’m thinking, “wtf?” How could that shit be wrong, its ancient, like John McCain, and he’s never wrong. Ancy suggested that book covers are actually highly influential in peoples decisions to read them. She presented a series of book covers with their titles blacked out. As a class we attempted to classify the genre of the book based on the cover. It turns out, one can often times determine what a books genre or plot is based on the design of the cover.

Don’t believe me? Well you should because its true. Auto/biographies often have covers that show a photograph in gray scale colors. Scifi/mystery books usually employ color schemes that make use of bright, neon colors. Mystery/horror books will utilized red and black color schemes more. Books that are very well known, like the Hobbit, will generally have a simple cover with one or two symbols from the story on it.

Then we got to the various covers of Lolita by Nabokov. This story is so well known that publishers could put a picture of a chocolate cupcake on the cover and sales wouldn’t be affected. Be aware of Lolita’s multitude of book covers.

From this exercise I gained the understanding that all elements of a particular media come into play during transmission of a message. So next time you are looking at a book, at least allow some judgement to come from its cover.