Project brief: Exley is about a nine-year-old boy trying to make sense of his father’s unexplained disappearance—a multilayered exploration of the overlap between the truth and the perception of truth.

Approach: While reading the manuscript, I scribbled the book’s title and realized it looked a lot like a confused nine-year-old boy.

Effectiveness: It stands out next to lots of book covers using full-bleed photographs.

I don’t know what this book is about but the cover makes me want to read it. That’s about all we can ask, right?