Filled voids: a cloud spotters guide to graphic design

Kylièn Sarino Bergh
07.07.2026

Haze, cloud, spot, and smudge merge into a book cover. There is a design, but no depiction. Every now and then I catch the glimpse of a book cover or a poster that is stripped of imagery and in which instead an arrangement of shades and colours devises the design. It appears not frequent enough to cast it as a trend, yet periodic and persistent enough to form somewhat of a genre in its own right. In an era awash with images – often used for commercial purposes and therefore unambiguous in nature – the atmospheric designs seem a welcome antidote. Yet, a design devoid of depiction also raises questions. For how can we make sense out of a design that has nothing to depict? Let us here examine some of the filled voids to think of a cloud spotters guide to interpreting atmospheric graphic design.

Figure 1. Theo Kurpershoek [designer], Querido [publisher], De ontvachting, paperback book cover, 13,5 x 21,3 cm, 1960.

Atmospheric imagination

Let’s start with a basic acknowledgement: every design is an image. Regardless if it features figurative depictions or none at all, each piece of graphic design constitutes an appearance. It is from there on that we can decide on a starting point for venturing into atmospheric graphic design as a gerne. To indicate the longevity of this genre, I gladly point at a case leading us decades back for the cover design of the poetry collection ‘De ontvachting’ (The Deshedding) from Leo Vroman, designed by Theo Kurpershoek in 1960. (Fig. 1.) It was selected amongst the best book designs that year, which testifies of the appreciation for the cloudlike design. 1 In an upward movement, shades of cinnamon brown and a dark noir alternate in a rustle of a camouflage-esque composition. Just as glaze invigorates ceramics to a showpiece, a haze of colour creates an atmospheric design that adds structure to the surface of the printed medium. There is no depiction on the book cover, but more importantly, none is needed. It shifts from representation to presentation. By not making a reference to external facts or recognisable motifs it suffices with being a motif in and of itself.

While the design may be abstract, it evokes associations nevertheless. From the haze of a shadowy shifting colour planes emerges the impression of a natural atmosphere. It may be zoomed in on the microscopic archaea, it may be zoomed out on the astronomical nebulae, or focused on a field of clouds residing in between. It is as of a microcosmos has taken hold over the printed matter. That such atmospheric appearances feature a splendour is argued for by Gavin Pretor-Pinney. In The Cloudspotter’s Guide (2006) he states that the beauty of clouds in particular is underrated, poetically describing them as ‘surfaceless bodies.’ 2 Their ephemeral nature encompasses a dramatic character, variety, and a degree of beauty that is hardly rivalled in nature itself. While situated between earthly and celestial bodies, clouds form an atmospheric layer that blends the real and the poetic. As they are both connected to and detached from earthly reality, it hardly comes as a surprise that the depiction of clouds themselves were commonly employed by iconographic and symbolic painters as vehicles for divinity. As noted in The Book of Symbols: “Clouds are part of an endless, reciprocal exchange between the ethereal and the earthly, moving between formlessness and form. In many cultures, clouds were regarded as the wellsprings of cosmic fertility (…) hovering between heaven and earth, it has been an image that conveyed the hiddenness as well as the manifestation of the divine.” 3 This angle of the cloudspotter provides a compelling perspective of perceiving the poetic nature of the atmospheric genre of design.

Figure 2. Metahaven [designer], Valiz [publisher], Antennae Series, Arts in Society, book cover designs for a series, 2009-to date. (Courtesy of the publisher)

Vagueness as motif

The atmospheric fusion of colour planes results in a pattern with seemingly endless variations. This breadth of variation is visibly demonstrated by the covers of the book series Antenae, designed by Metahaven. (Fig. 2.) Duotone colour planes are merging in a contrasting blur, which colour scheme varies for each independent issue. There is an alternation in form and colour that seemingly allows for countless variations. This inexhaustibility of variety, and the particular appreciation thereof, is described by art historian Ernst Gombrich as amor infini. 4 In his study of visual arts, he distinguishes between the representational function of images, described in Art and Illusion (1960), and the decorative function of images, discussed extensively in The Sense of Order (1979). For decorative arts goes, according to Gombrich, that the interpretation of the image as meaning must give way to the image’s function in constructing a structure. In other words, representation is subordinate and harmony is the goal. As far as the applied artist up to the twentieth century were concerned, order and harmony were self-evident preconditions for an honest approach to design. This is interesting, for it diverts from today’s common conceptions that utilise design mostly for its communicative functions. Yet the colourful haze is not centred on a direct and unambiguous communitive depiction at all, but on how from a palette of tones and shapes emerges a harmonious appearance.

This is exactly what is demonstrated so effectively in the covers for the series Antenae. The atmospheric design provides a poetic appearance that is both fitting and appealing as much as it provides little spoilers or give-aways on the insides of the book. It instigates an intriguing intellectual aura that obscures – and therewith potentially triggers further interest. Exactly because the colourful blur is non-revealing, it provides the fitting ingredients to develop the visual components for a series. What it shows, is that the designers of these book covers have taken hold over the essential aspects of graphic design – colours, shapes, type and material properties – to care for the materialisation of the object rather than for its commodification. In other words, the atmospherically approach to design reinvigorates the applied artists’ attitude, favouring integrity over marketability of designed objects.

Left: Remco van Bladel [designer], De Ateliers: artist talks, poster, 2019. (Courtesy of the designer)
Right: Martin Kohout en Dan Meththananda [editing], Jan Horčík [designer], Night Shifter, 2018. (Courtesy of the designer)

In the haze of commerce

Granted that every design discipline rests to a certain extent on market infrastructures, that’s not to say that commercial value is design’s only purpose. In essence, when it comes to graphic design, we can see how the practice is centred on the shaping of appearances. That is to say, the visualisation and materialisation of our means of communication is the raison d'être for graphic design. Life in our mass societies amidst visual media is highly concerned with the continuous conjuring up of images to compensate for that which has none. Podcasts, radio programs, literature, social events, news items or coffee beans; it all needs to be seen and visually transmutable to one and another. This is a modern mandate, aptly proclaimed by Camiel van Winkel as regime of visibility.5 While each book is in fact no more than a collection of text and images bound together in paper substances, design provides its visual and material substance. Particularly by the design of the cover, printed matter becomes equipped with a face and character of its own. This face is in turn seen and judged by others, and it is exactly this potency to be seen that triggers a commercial interest in design.

Yet when it comes to judging books by their covers, the alluring wrapping is by itself a relative recent phenomenon, as pointed out by professor in book studies Lisa Kuitert.6 Before bound books – the pret a porter publication if you will – editions were simply supplied to merchants as packages of unbound printed papers.7 After all, the buyer would have the book bound by craftsmen on commission, supplied with ornate motifs or gold embossing if they could afford it. While books have existed for centuries, as leather bound manuscripts, it is only throughout the 19th century that imprinted book covers emerge, partially due to the introduction of linen book cloth that allowed for printed impressions unlike its leather counterparts. Variation was little, as publishers are somewhat creatures of habit. Since books were foremost showcased in their allocated bookshelves, particular attention was paid to the spine: an interest that is virtually lost due to today’s popularity of concise paperbacks. Thus, the contemporary interest in the cover as a representation of its contents, and more importantly as commercial spokesmen, stems from the competitive commercialisation of printed matter that occurred throughout the early twentieth century – known as the pocketwars.8 In the aim to appeal to the large audiences of potential buyers, book covers mimicked the public perceptions of taste and common conventions.

Today, design no longer by default consciously cares for the appearance of a book. Instead, by prioritising promotional purposes it not only manifests appearances, but also its public relations. Even the simplest book cover is tended to as an advertisement. Yet as it was stinkingly pointed out by the design critic Simon Mari Pruys, markets may provide the infrastructure for cultural goods to exist on a mass-produced scale, but that is not to say that it supplies the motivation for its creation.9 In other words, the economy might make things possible, but does not per se provide the reason for objects to exist. Yet the treatment of book covers as promotional tools show that economic interests have gained dominance over our means of production. The logic of commerce overshadows our reasoning of fashioning objects – even when it seemingly has nothing to do with commerce at all.
This is exactly what makes the atmospheric genre in graphic design so particularly interesting. Through the ambiguous haze of colour, it turns its back on prevailing norms and commercial conventions that favour clear and revealing images. Instead, through the particular focus on the essentials of a book cover – materials, forms, colours and letters – the atmospheric designs suggest a poetic and concealing approach. Rather than promoting the object, it simply focusses on its materialisation. As a vague reminiscent of skilfully crafting cultural goods, simply for the sake of caring for its materialisation, it seems to resist that economic tendency of turning all appearances into promotional propaganda.

Left: Elizabeth Gallón Droste [author], Ana Resende [designer], Oreri [publisher], Útica, book cover, 2025.
Right: Tillack Knöll [graphic design], Ina Bauer Studio [typographic wordmark], Hegel-Hölderlin 2020, book cover, 2020. (Courtesy of the designer)

Conclusion

Just like glazing, the atmospheric genre in graphic design covers its containing object in an extravaganza of colour. From a haze of ambiguous shades emerges an appearance that may less be concerned with an immediate clear conception of meaning, but even more so with constituting an atmosphere and effect through its essential components. It demonstrates an approach to graphic design that takes up lessons from the applied arts in its passionate attention to shaping objects with cultural integrity. Herewith, the ambiguous covers expose a bigger issue. What this close reading reveals is that they aren’t without meaning in and of themselves, but rather that it is an unfavourable climate for non-commercial values to seep through design processes. Yet by embracing that intangibility of transformative nature, the atmospheric designs propose a poetic appearance that reminds us that objects are about more than commerce. They are vehicles of our shared values and materialise what we care for. What is more, when it comes to way how depict and imitate nature, Ernst Gombrich argued that there is a reciprocal relationship, whereby appreciation for nature also influences appreciation for its representation in applied arts, and vice versa. In an age plagued by climate crisis, such efforts and exercises of appreciating the beauty of our living world may be all the more relevant altogether. Ecological systems may benefit from recognition, as much as design approaches cantered on integrity ought to be valued. It’s all rather well observed by the cloudspotter I’d say.

Left: Pierre Bourdieu [author], Dick Pels [editor], Van Gennep Amsterdam [publisher], Opstellen over smaak, habitus en het veldbegrip, boekomslag, 1989.
Right: Saam Nijstad [editor], Tirion [publisher], De Kunsthandel: van Lady Borgony tot Leonardo da Vinci, boekomslag, 1995.

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Kylièn Sarino Bergh, is co-founder and editor of Platform Pudding. He is a researcher and writer in the field of design culture, with a particular focus on graphic design. He is fellow at the Wim Crouwel Institute in Amsterdam (NL), lecturer Media, Design Art and Architecture at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and theory tutor of the graphic design department at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague.

Notes

1. Zie het rapport De Best Verzorgde Vijftig Boeken van Het Jaar 1960: Verslag van de Jury & catalogus, uitgegeven door Commissie voor de collectieve propaganda van het Nederlandse boek, 1961.
2. Gavin Pretor-Pinney, The Cloudspotter’s Guide (Sceptre, 2006).
3. Ami Ronnberg en Kathleen Martin, eds., The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images (Taschen, 2010), 58-9.
4. Ernst Gombrich, The Sense of Order (Cornell University Press, 1979).
5. Camiel van Winkel, The Regime of Visibility (NAi Publishers, 2005).
6. Erik van den Berg and Lisa Kuitert, Omslag: De Opmerkelijkste Boekomslagen Uit de Rubriek Omslag van de Volkskrant (Hoogland & Van Klaveren, 2022), 5.
7. Ibid.
8. For a discussion on the competitive market of the paperback industry see Piet Schreuders, The Book of Paperbacks: A Visual History of the Paperback (Virgin, 1981); for pocketwar see Lisa Kuitert, Het Uiterlijk Behang: Reeksen in de Nederlandse Literatuur, 1945-1996 (De Bezige Bij, 1997).
9. Simon Mari Pruys, Dingen Vormen Mensen: een studie over produktie, consumptie en cultuur (Ambo, 1972).