Making book covers look fancy – Julian Montague's designs are stunning

“It’s what is on the inside that counts” – we are all familiar with that old phrase, but while I am all for kicking out superficiality, when it comes to books, looking nice on the outside as well as being pretty great on the inside surely can’t be a bad thing. Brilliant artwork, brilliant stories, it is a no-brainer really and something graphic designer Julian Montague has rather fortunately become pretty accustomed to.

Creating the artwork for a whole brood of books, his striking designs, block colours and obvious appreciation of the beauty found in simplicity make even the most mundane sounding books (try Managing Structural Bird Problems for a title) a dream to look at. And, setting up a curatorial blog in 2009 on which every day Julian posts a book which features beautiful graphic design, it is clear that he won’t be running out of inspiration anytime soon.

But Julian doesn’t stop at books, with a portfolio full of posters, album artwork and seriously sleek logo designs, this guy clearly doesn’t mess about and I for one am seriously impressed.