Sometimes a cover doesn’t need neon explosions, Photoshop wolves, or half-naked billionaires to earn a spot in the Hall of Horrors. Sometimes, all it takes is one very corporate shade of blue and a design committee that clearly thought “watercolor rectangles” would inspire the masses.
Welcome to Level Up Your Leadership, where the cover is about as inspiring as a Tuesday afternoon staff meeting that could have been an email. The entire design is built on a repeating blue block texture that looks like a default PowerPoint background. You can almost hear someone saying, “That’s good enough, let’s go with that.” Leadership lesson #1: “Good enough” doesn’t actually look good.
The typography commits a hostile takeover of its own. “Level Up” is in orange, because why not clash with the calm blue background? “Leadership” is in white, jammed underneath like it’s sulking about being forced into this company retreat. And the subtitle? Oh, the subtitle. “Becoming More Conscious, Courageous & Resilient” looks like bullet points cut straight out of an HR manual. I half expect the next line to be “Don’t forget to complete your compliance training by Friday.”
Even the top blurb feels like filler: “Stop trying to be perfect…” The irony being, not a single pixel here even tried. It’s the design equivalent of giving a motivational speech in a beige conference room under fluorescent lights.
Covers are supposed to inspire trust, motivation, and curiosity. This one inspires only the urge to take a coffee break and scroll LinkedIn for someone who actually knows how to design a leadership brand. It’s corporate cringe at its finest: bland, forgettable, and utterly allergic to creativity.
The final lesson from this cover? If you’re writing about leveling up, don’t let your book look like it’s stuck on tutorial mode.