Tropes for covers of books, comics, music albums, film posters, DVDs and others.
Compare Film Posters.
Tropes:
- Alternate Album Cover: A popular music album with multiple versions of its album cover.
- American Kirby Is Hardcore: A work with a cutesy-looking cover has a more badass-looking cover in an overseas release.
- Billed Above the Title: Famous actor or writer gets top billing for their work's cover.
- "The Breakfast Club" Poster Homage
- "Circle on the Ground" Group Shot: Useful composition for arranging characters/creators on the cover, as it offers more or less equal exposure.
- Clandestine Cover: Covers that disguise the content of the work.
- Clickbait Gag: YOU WON'T BELIEVE ABOUT THE CONTENTS OF THIS ARTICLE!!! (GONE SEXUAL) <—
- Copycat Cover: Cover shamelessly imitates another.
- Cover Drop: The cover art gets dropped somewhere in the work.
- Covers Always Lie: The cover does not match what happens within the work.
- Design Student's Orgasm: Overly artsy cover.
- Detail-Hogging Cover: The cover of an animated work has more detail added to the characters than the actual animation.
- Establishing Team Shot: Where The Team is shown together on the cover.
- Evil Overlooker: The cover shows the villain's face looming over the heroes.
- Face on the Cover: Using a celebrity's face to sell product.
- Fanservice Cover: Including fanservice on the cover to boost sales.
- Floating Head Syndrome: Cover features shots of the cast's disembodied heads.
- Idiosyncratic Cover Art: The cover of multiple volumes share a theme.
- Juxtaposed Reflection Poster: Reflecting the focal character of your poster but changing something about the reflection to emphasize something about them.
- Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: Using an attractive person (usually female) to advertise one's game- despite said person having little or nothing to do with the game's actual content.
- Larger-Than-Life Promo: The cover has the main characters as gigantic when they are normal-sized in the actual work.
- Minimalistic Cover Art: There's not much in this cover.
- Mirrored Confrontation Shot: The cover depicts two opposing people or groups facing one another.
- Musical Squares: Cover features panels with individual musicians in each one.
- One Cast Member per Cover: A series has a different member of the cast on the cover of each volume.
- Orange/Blue Contrast: Hollywood loves contrasting orange-ish objects in a blue environment, and vice-versa.
- Pietà Plagiarism: The cover depicts a dead character being carried in the arms of someone grieving them.
- Reaching Towards the Audience: Cover character extending their arm towards the Fourth Wall.
- Scene Cover: A specific scene of the work is featured in the cover.
- Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: Cover character is shown pointing their weapon at the Fourth Wall, as if they were threatening the audience.
- Soundtrack Cover Character Jam: A soundtrack release features a work's character(s) playing or listening to music in the cover.
- Spoiler Cover: Work doesn't care about including its twists in the cover.
- Superdickery: The cover depicts a scene that, without the proper context, makes it look like the hero is being a jerk.
- Talkative Cover: Descriptive stylized text in a cover art as a part of the graphic design.
- Team Shot: Cover features The Team posing to the audience.
- Textless Album Cover
- Trend Covers: Cover becomes so popular other works start emulating it.
- Tyop on the Cover: The title is misspelled on the title card or the episode list.
- Variant Cover: Comic books have limited printings of an issue where the issue has a different cover to try and get people to buy multiple copies of the same comic.
- V-Formation Team Shot: Cover features The Team walking in a V-formation.
- Wolverine Publicity: A character is prominently featured on the cover regardless of how big their actual role in the story is.