Design Elements/Texture: Exploration of a Good Example

I have chosen this book cover as my example for the use of texture in graphic design. It's a Turkish book and I've recently finished to read. The title of the book is ASK (you should read it as ASHK), which means LOVE in Turkish. The texture goes beyond a simple illustration of a leaf. It is actually a photograph of the radiography of a leaf, but in the shape of a heart. The strength comes from its clarity and simplicity.


For me, good photography is stronger than words. But if you have a good photography and powerful words, even better! If the photography is a good one (like here) then you can trace elements of design, which are well-used too. Lines here are veins of a leaf symbolically resembling veins in the heart. The life brought to leaves through veins is the same like the blood (life) carried by our veins to our heart. The novel tells a modern love story between a Jewish-American housewife and a modern Sufi living in Amsterdam, set against a historical background that narrates the spiritual bond between Rumi and Shams of Tabriz. So the shape here is a representational, intentional and meaningful one supporting the title and the content of the book.