According to the Financial Post, "The average skimmer who picks up a book spends eight seconds looking at the front jacket and fifteen seconds skimming the jacket." You can't judge - but you can sell - a book by its jacket. Here are several suggested book jacket design techniques that the great designers use:

The necessaries for your front jacket: The front jacket should provide your book title, subtitle, and author name. Potentially, and often missed are including blurbs and/or testimonials from important people.

Think of your jacket like a billboard. The best designs transmit the book's significance at a look, with simple, uncluttered design. Unique, distinctive, bold, colourful pictures work well. But keep the graphic style uniform with the content and personality of the book. Make sure there is a fundamental focal point to your design.

I recommend using bold, distinctive typography on the front jacket. When choosing colours, consider how thesecolours will look when transferred to black and white so your jacket will reproduce well in black and white ads, catalogues, and flyers. Also make sure the font you use for the title is legible from a distance and suitable for the book's subject.

Jackets that scream "layperson" and have a "do it yourself" look make it difficult to get rid of your book at all. If you lack ability in this field, seek the services of an experienced book jacket designer. A professional designer has the creativity, skills, software, access to stock photography, and printing knowledge that will make your jacket stand out above others in the marketplace.

What should you put on the spine of your book? Your name, title, and publishing company's logo show up on the spine. Make sure the information on the spine is clean, shipshape, and intelligible. I recommend using bold, complementary lettering on the spine as well.

Important items you should include on your back jacket. Place the category name in the upper left-hand corner to help stores and libraries shelve your book properly. Write a headline that clearly addresses who should buy the book. It should be followed by sales copy explaining what the book is about. Then provide a short bulleted list of benefits to skimmers.

I recommend including no more than three testimonials and endorsements, as well as your bio and photograph. Close to the bottom, put back copy in bold. Position the price in the lower left corner of the back jacket. Also include the 13-digit ISBN number for cataloguing and the bar code in the lower right corner (below ISBN number), which stores and libraries use for scanning information and price.

Don't forget to include recognition for your book jacket's artists, photog, and/or designer.

You now have a good impression of what makes a sound book jacket design. Remember, book jacket design is a form of casing-and good packaging attracts buyers to products. That's why successful companies corporations spend $1,000,000s researching the best product packaging possible.

 This looks very cool:

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. Helvetica will screen at film festivals, museums, design conferences, and cinemas worldwide, followed by the DVD release this fall. More about the film...

From the clips I've seen on youtube, the film moves between interviews and clips of Helvetica in our mental landscape. According to the filmaker, the montages, backed with incidental music, was the original conception of  the film — which was first conceived walking around NYC listening to an MP3 player. 

The film really illustrates how ubiquitous Helvetica is in our culture presently.

On a completely unrelated note, I put a quick typography note on the ellipsis on my other blog. Actually — I just wanted to see if the trackback option was working.