telophase | Mangatalk: Covers

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Mangatalk: Covers

Stemming from this afternoon's discussion of cover colors, I got the desire to see if I could see any difference in the top-selling manga and less well selling manga. I couldn't find any numbers for a full year anywhere, but the admin of Love Manga loves to crunch numbers and posts a Top 50 list every month. So these ratings swiped from his Top 50 Manga for November 2005.

I swiped the images from Amazon.com, and since Amazon was running slow for me, instead of comparing the top 10 versus the bottom 10 in this list, I'm just doing the top 5.

Caveats: we all know the cover isn't the only thing that causes book sales (word of mouth is actually the #1 selling point), so you don't need to tell me that the cover is only part of that and there's all these other aspects that go into it. (Anyone posting to tell me that gets directed up to this sentence. :D) Also, looking at one month's sales don't really tell us much - I'd need to look at the sales month-by-month for an entire year or more, and frankly you'd probably need to pay me to do that. XD So we can't draw any real conclusions from this, but it might provide something to think about. Or it might not. Let's see, shall we?

Rating (Last Month) Title Publisher Estimated Sales

01(11) Fruits Basket vol.12 Tokyopop 5459
02(12) Samurai Executioner vol.06 Dark Horse 5333
03(23) Rurouni Kenshin vol.20 Viz Media 3339
04(24) Trigun Maximum vol.07 Dark Horse 3277
05(25) D.N.Angel vol.10 Tokyopop 3200

(The Love Manga admin gets his numbers from two different sources, and one of them doesn't give estimated sales, so the bottom ones don't have estimated sales.)

45 Ark Angels vol.01 Tokyopop
46 Nana vol.01 Viz Media
~~47 Art of Fullmetal Alchemist Viz Media~~
48 Earthian vol.01 Blu Manga
49 Faeries Landing vol.11 Tokyopop
50 Kamichama Karin vol.02 Tokyopop

I decided not to use The Art of Fullmetal Alchemist, because it's not a manga in the sense that the rest of them are manga - it's a non-narrative artbook.

First, the small versions because as any comic artist knows, you get a better sense of the overall design without getting bogged down in detail when you shrink it down. Plus, I figure when someone's scanning the bookshelf, they're not really scrutinizing the covers. (You'll get the larger version lower down.)

1-5
Image hosted by Photobucket.com

45-50

Thumbnails:

Hmmmm... I think overall, in the thumbnails the top 5 tend to be a little more clear and with graphic design that's a little more simple than the bottom 5. Trigun Maximum is the only one with three characters on it, and they're all separated with big areas of negative space in between, with one so far apart that he's almost off the cover.

I can read Samurai Executioner, Trigun, and D.N. Angel in the thumbnails in the top 5, although not Fruits Basket and Rurouni Kenshin. I can't read any of the names in the thumbnails in the bottom 5. I'd be able to read Nana if it weren't that it was in that vibrant purple on top of green, which makes the two colors vibrate against each other. The Earthian font is a little ornate to be able to read this small - I'm pretty sure that if I didn't know it was Earthian, I wouldn't be able to figure it out.

Fruits Basket and Samurai Executioner each have one figure against a simple background, very graphic. Trigun has the negative space causing the figures to pop out. Rurouni Kenshin and D.N.Angel have more fussiness in the art, but they each have one figure closer to the viewer, more prominent than the other, and entirely in warm, bright colors. OTOH, in the bottome 5, they are all fussier and more crowded, without one really prominent figure foregrounded in the same way as RK and DNA above. Kamichama Karin has one figure, but she's almost completely white and has white elements from the background sort of confusing the visuals. Ark Angels has one figure foregrounded, but there's a lot of detail making the picture busy, and she's in pastel colors, which fade her a bit.

I think if I had to point out the one thing that makes the difference between each group, it's that every on in the top 5 has one strong, recognizable graphic element in the design popping out at me and making one focal point on a character's face - the figure on Fruits Basket, who is popped out by the white and pastels in the background and whose face is a pale spot framed by brown and soft gold, the single figure on Samurai Executioner, Kenshin's hair and kimono popping him out in Rurouni Kenshin (note that his hair curls around his head and that his sword points directly at his face), the negative space surrounding Ren (the woman) in Trigun (her head is the darkest spot on the cover, and is in almost the exact center), and the boy's red hair and shirt in D.N. Angel frame his face.

The bottom 5 don't really have a design with a graphic element as a recognizable focal point. Ark Angels is confusing and detailed from a distance and you can't pick out the character's face that easily (the colors surrounder her are a bit too light), Nana's focal point is the vibrant purple title and her face is way too small and completely hidden, Earthian has two figures with a lot of negative space, but you can't even tell they're human-like in the thumbnail because it looks like a pastel explosion, Faerie's Landing has the girl's yellow hair, but the yellow doens't pop as much as the red in the above examples, and since her clothing is faded into the composition as a whole, her face is not framed so that her hair floats there by itself, and Kamichama Karin is mostly unrecognizeable with a face that blends into the rest of the composition.

And now bigger.

1-5

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

45-50

Large versions:

I'm getting tired and I have a bunch of stuff I need to do tonight, so I'm giving this short shrift. I think the focal point thing holds true even in the bigger versions - one face is the focal point of all the top 5, and none of the bottom 5 have that.

Ark Angels almost does that, but there's just not enough dark or strong colors framing her face. Nana's face is completely hidden, the faces in Earthian blend into the rest of the pastel colors. Faerie's Landing has competing focal poitns with teh white of the one girl's shirt smack dab in the middle of the picture, fighting with the other girl's hair, and while Kamichama Karin's eyes are almost the darkest thing in the picture, they're still desaturated and faded out, and the green of the title is fighting with them.

And I note that in reference to the discussion of green in the previous post, two of the bottom 5 have significant green elements and only one of the top 5 does. ;)

So. Thoughts? Arguments? Insights? :D

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Do you think covers are much more important to people standing in the bookstore than they are to people ordering online, because on-the-spot purchases are more influenced by environmental factors for impulse buyers?

I don't know, really. I'm not sure what the process of online shopping is - do people predominantly buy things they've already decided on, or do they waffle about a bit? I know I tend to waffle (I spent part of today waffling about some Doctor Who books on Amazon.com before deciding just to buy the ones with Captain Jack in them), and my mother always has about $300 worth of books sitting in her cart between shopping session, and when she goes to pay then decides which ones she's going to get and which ones she's going to leave in the shopping cart until next time.

Not really an insight but the cover of Nana looks terrible. On a shelf, my eyes would pass right over it because there's nothing for them to grab onto. Just had to make that comment because I hadn't seen the cover until now.

Yup. As a picture I like it, as a cover I don't. Maybe that's why Viz went with teh PURPLE elements, to drag attention to it?

...did they mean to drag attention to it in a good way? ^^; I dunno. I don't think the purple typography and the green monochrone are very flattering.

That said, they definitely do contrast.

Maybe that's because it's HIP and YOUNG and EDGY and a little bit KOOKY?

Or the art director's colorblind, maybe.

Actually, that Nana volume really jumped at me when I saw it at a 'new manga titles' endcap at a bookstore, though that was because it looked so different from everything else on display, due to the art style.

Though looking at it here, it does look pretty ugly. Just noting that the lack of clean and vibrant colors made it pop by virtue of being the only one looking the way it did.

Makes sense. And my joking about HIP and YOUNG etc. aside, I think there's a certain attitude and audience that the design is cultivating with those colors.

Nah, it's pretty much a straight replication of the original. Well, actually the purple is much darker than it looks here so it doesn't vibrate half as much (it's sort of the color of a visited link, to put it oh-so-unpoetically).

Um, why yes, I do indeed have three versions of Nana.

I like the covers because they tell stories of a day in the life of the Nanas, but obviously that's a gimmick that doesn't work too well when only one volume is out!

Actually, Nana's covers turned me away the first time I saw them, if somebody would have shown me the interior art then I would have become a fan many years ago...

I love the covers of Fruits Basket and Samurai Executioner. Nana would have been better off if they'd featured the two Nanas or just one of them rather than the apartment.

It might be interesting to do this again with a set selected from the best and worst-selling OEL titles, as those are all starting from a fairly equal footing in terms of previous audience exposure.

I'm wondering if the PURPLE was Viz's attempt to create an eyecatch with that cover? I think in Japan it'd be less of a problem, since serial manga are read more widely and so there'd already be a good audience when the tankoubon came out, so that an eyecatching cover isn't quite as necessary? Or am I talking out of my ass?

If you can find me an ordered list of OEL titles, I'll be willing to do that. :D

I'm hoping the Love Manga guy crunches the numbers for the full year of 2005. That would be interesting to compare.

I couldn't find an ordered list of OEL titles, but by going through several of the by-month lists and recalling what I've seen written in various articles, I put together a not-terribly-accurate rough list.

High on list:

Dramacon
Sokora Refugees
I Luv Halloween

Medium to low on list:

Mark of the Succubus
Bizenghast

Unknown (which could mean they didn't even make the list), but why not look at their covers anyway:

@Large
Shutterbox
The Dreaming
Steady Beat
Midnight Opera

I noticed that Fruits Basket cover when I was in the store the other day. I don't follow the series, and the pastel shoujoness of some of the earlier cover designs have made me back away. But this one caught my eye as soon as I entered the aisle at Borders.

I've also generally liked the Bleach covers, each of which has a single character on the cover against a white background.

Yeah, FB has a lot of simple, stark graphic design in the interior and cover artwork.

I really like the Bleach covers, too. :)

* The Hunter x Hunter covers do much the same thing - one character, riding some weird animal, on a white background.

I think you're stretching the point a little with Ark Angels. It's not obvious in the small version, but in the large version, you can see a " ^ " of faces, where the central face is emphasized compositionally, even if it isn't by color.

On the other hand, I'm noticing that all of the top-5 titles have a rule of thirds composition, whereas the bottom-5 titles are far more central-figure, bullseye types-- less strong in general. The exception being Nana, which doesn't have a foreground at all, so.

Note my new post, made after I went and got AA from my bookshelf. :D

The cover of Ark Angels is still fussier than the top 5, and that awful gold/brown that got put on the branding elements really isn't helping it. I think if the faces were larger and took up more of the cover the central one would be more visible to someone skimming shelves.

Yeah-- it's certainly not a *strong* cover by any sense of the word... and a lot of it *is* the coloration.
Unlike the Kenshin cover, which was a lot stronger than I initially gave it credit for. Go Watsuki!

Yeah. At first I thought Kenshin was too confued, and then I saw that the face was the focal point, and that the black of Kenshin's eyelashes and pupil popped out as the darkest elements in a sea of red and orange, and realized it worked.

It's all about the diagonal sort of eye shape that's made by the curve of his sword, continuing into the curve of the jaw, and the curve of his hair... mm, I love composition. I've been known to freeze-frame anime and copy the lines of the figures into a thumbnail in my notebook... and really, for all the shoujo is prettier, it tends to be the shonen animes that have the strong compositions, so I find them more visually interesting in the end.

* Yeah, the bottom covers, if there's more than one figure, it's all in a tight composition, while the top covers spread the figures out in RK, and have them heading off in the same direction in DNA (so the movement in both of them is in the same direction, not all pointing in towards a center. Er, if I explained what I'm trying to say in any comprehensible way).

Before I start, I'm horribly biased. I always felt that the covers that were redone by Tokyopop were done poorly however "Fruits Baskets" is one of the better designs. 45-50, if I didn't research my titles, I would probably not buy. They look unappealing, Nana doesn't look like what it's about if you didn't know already. Faries Landing really confuse me because... well... Where are the fairies? And it's too crowded.

I've noticed Fruit Baskets shows is the most appealing to me, from a glimpse. The manga is shoujo has the good colour scheme (which is important to me), it gives me a glimpse of what the manga is about and because the image in the back is faded, it has the most negative space.

Earthian is nice, but the image is just in the middle and I can't tell (even though I know) what the story is about. Bias: I don't like the font but it works with the image. But it hits it's target audience, I would hope.

The ones that had less crowded or had more negative space. My Graphic Design course our teacher beat us down with it in our "LESS IS MORE" lesson and less is more, you have such a small space to show an idea. But I really don't want to really bust my brain thinking about Graphic design right now.

I don't really have a point, but I'd just like to say that even beyond composition, there's probably something interesting in how the mangaka are deciding to market the stories. Samurai Executioner and Kenshin very distinctly have swords. Their eyes aren't looking out towards the reader; instead, the characters are much more focused within themselves, if that makes any sense. The others, with the exception of Nana and Earthian, are all looking out towards the audience. I'm sure that those stories (none of which I've read) get a lot of their audience from people who buy the books for the pretty characters. Those are deliberate posed shots with characters also very deliberately chosen. Judging from the cover, Earthian probably gets romance readers (I feel like I should know what it's about, but honestly can't remember) and that's what it wants to highlight. Nana is probably directed towards an entirely different audience.

I'd also just like to say that of the ten, I'd personally be most likely to pick up Nana. I have no idea what the story is about, but I'm attracted to the gritty colors, the lighting, and the lack of a centralized focus. I'm drawn into the scene. I'm not a fan of the lurid purple, but I'd actually take that over the Samurai Executioner cover. Though the purple title is visually assaulting, it's balanced by the line at the bottom, and frames the general image. In comparison, Samurai Executioner, one of the top five, drives me crazy. Individually, the components of the cover don't bother me, but the blue at the bottom makes me feel as though the cover is terribly top heavy. The black background and white lettering are dramatic, the central image strong, but the lighter blue bottom makes it feel unbalanced. It doesn't echo any other color in the cover and seems like a random paste-on. Even though Nana takes it to an extreme, the color element of the title and the border does a lot.

DNAngel and Faerie's Landing are my next two favorites, in terms of balance. They both manage to handle the colors, gray and yellow respectively, very well, giving your eye a way to first jump on the title, then trace down towards the image. On the other hand, I think Fruits Basket and Kenshin do too much with their colors. The purple dialogue badge thing completely imposes on the reader. In Kenshin, you said that the red in the latter focuses the eye, but when I glance at it, I just see an explosion of red and it takes me a while to sift out what goes where. The title takes second place to Kenshin's hair. Ark Angel's brown title blends in too much with the frame, and so it's not immediately clear what it's called.

I'm kind of working this out as I'm typing, so I hope it makes sense. I'm just rather iffy on the notion that the centralized face is the key. I really think it depends on what they're marketing and how the color scheme works. When I'm glancing over covers, I like my titles to be clear and the space not cluttered. I want to be able to pick those out, and then I'll take more time on the art. On the other hand, and this is more of a personal thing, I am not a fan of bright eyed cheery people staring at me. Unlike what I suspect is a fairly large demographic, I'm not willing to buy a book just because the characters are pretty. As a result so the random poses are a lot less enticing than an actual relevant cover. Since manga is directed at specific markets, I think a serious study would have to be done more within genres. *shrug* But this is all mostly conjecture. What little experience I have comes from personal taste and a limited experience doing layouts for yearbook. :/

Very interesting topic, though, and I'm sorry if I totally missed the point of your entry. I'm running on two hours of sleep and my attention is not what it should be. *sheepish*

"Kamichama Karin has one figure, but she's almost completely white and has white elements from the background sort of confusing the visuals."

I don't have the book on me to check but I am pretty sure the character on the cover is actually a boy. Unless there is something new in volume 2? (Or I am confusing myself which is very possible.)

I haven't read it, so I don't know. :D

Yep it's definately a boy. I dug it out of the boxes because I thought I was missing something.

OK, thanks. :D Will edit when I get a chance.

Interesting analysis, but I think that there's more to the numbers than cover design alone can account for. The top five sellers are all well-known serieses, and they are later volumes. Fans have been reading them for ten volumes or so; they're already familiar with the characters and engrossed in the story. The five bottom sellers are mostly first volumes, and as such have not yet garnered as many devoted fans.

From the Caveats section I put in the third paragraph:

Caveats: we all know the cover isn't the only thing that causes book sales (word of mouth is actually the #1 selling point), so you don't need to tell me that the cover is only part of that and there's all these other aspects that go into it. (Anyone posting to tell me that gets directed up to this sentence. :D)

:) Yes, I am aware of that, but it does not hurt to look at ALL aspects of what makes a manga sell.

Oh, absolutely. I'm-- unfortunately-- looking at numbers from the vantage point of a bookseller; professional habit by this point. And sales numbers are never helped by the fact that shops tend to get mangas late and/or erratically, and this goes double for first issues. Subsequent issues tend to have preorders, bulking up the figures.

Longwinded and irrelevant way of saying I didn't mean to sound like I was belittling your essay, which I enjoyed. You know a lot more about design than I do, and I learn a lot.

01(11) Fruits Basket vol.12 Tokyopop 5459
Wait, it had only sold 5,459 copies? I don't know if that depresses me or makes me happy with our sale levels? Now I'm curious what a good run is for a comic book?

*reads the comments and such*

In one month. :D Over the next few months until the next volume comes out, it'll probably sell a lot more.

I have no idea what a good run for a comic or graphic novel is, actually.

Ohhhh in a month! I feel a lot better about that now. ^_^ I was thinking that if a super popular manga series like that could only pull down 5000+ copies sold then that was pretty sad.

Yah. :D David from Love Manga emailed me to let me know he's planning on crunching the numbers for a full year once the December numbers come out. (I need to answer that email, but I'm jsut now getting to read trhough LJ adn my email, since we had a Professional Development Day presentation thing at work today).

Plus, those numbers are estimated and ... they're only for the direct market. That's not counting bookstores and online. So the actual number is significantly higher than that. :D

How about manga phonebooks? Those things are busy as hell. Or do people just buy those out of habit or because of one particular story in it (I'm certainly guilty of that offense)? I love phonebooks so. If only a subscription wasn't so expensive (for a college student).

I think they might get them more for the general type of story that they put into it than for the cover. The cover would just signal the genre and the brand of that particular title, and the reader would key in on that.

That's a guess, though, since I haven't seen too many of them, and since I don't know Japanese the covers are nothing but design, with no meaning to me. My perception might change a little bit if I could recognize words within the characters.

The person on the cover of Kamichama Karin is actually a guy. :) Kazune-kun. You said "she". xD

Also note that all of these mangas were super hits in Japan(that's why they are making their way into English speaking countries). All of the covers are professional in their own right.

This was very helpful, thankyou. I tried to take in what you said and created my own manga cover, did I kind of achieve what you had been talking about? http://notsocluelessartist.deviantart.com/art/Cover-162639995 I would appreciate it if you would give me some feedback :) Thanks

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Mangatalk: Covers

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Thanks :)