PAST WINNER: 2025
Kishan Rajani was the creative force behind Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, with his striking three-tone cover the springboard for everything from billboards and bookmarks to tote bags and T-shirts. Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road and Akwaeke Emezi’s Little Rot also reaped the rewards of his eye for attention-grabbing images, colour palettes and typography.
DESIGNER OF THE YEAR Luke Bird
After being shortlisted in five of the six years that this award has been running, freelancer Luke Bird is finally the Designer of the Year. His most high-profile work in 2025 was undoubtedly the vibrant covers of Uketsu’s Japanese mysteries. The floorplan-style design for Strange Houses and bento box-inspired artwork for Strange Pictures were vital in helping them stand out on bookshop tables, and the covers were brilliantly leveraged by Independent Publisher of the Year Pushkin Press in marketing strategies. Bird’s work is driven by a less-is-more approach that strips out clutter in favour of bold and striking images, accompanied by distinctive fonts. This was seen on other standout fiction covers in 2025, including Ledia Xhoga’s Booker-longlisted Misinterpretation for Daunt Books and Ben Pester’s Nero-shortlisted The Expansion Project for Granta. These brilliant designs showed the difference that covers can make to the visibility of literary independents like Pushkin, Daunt and Granta. Bird also worked his magic for some much bigger publishers, including two powerfully simple covers for
Ben Lippett’s Sunday Times bestseller How I Cook for HarperCollins and Karan Gokani’s Indian 101 for Pan Macmillan, as well as interiors for the latter. In ultra-crowded genres such as cookery, compelling visuals can make all the difference to a book’s prospects. They were also the cues for some great promotional merch and social media posts. The British Book Awards panel agreed that after many years of outstanding work, Bird’s time has come. “The man’s a genius,” they said. “He delivers some really inventive stuff and knock-out covers, and the ones for Uketsu were core to their success.”
THE SHORTLIST
Micaela Alcaino James Annal Benjamin Hughes Simon Michele Henry Petrides Rafaela Romaya
Charlotte Stroomer Jo Thomson
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