If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if a motivational poster mated with a Windows XP screensaver, look no further than The 7 Universal Laws. This cover is a shining—literally glowing—example of how cosmic ambition can collide with design mediocrity and create something that looks less like a book cover and more like clip art for a yoga studio brochure.
Let’s start with the centerpiece: the swirling galaxy, or is it a black hole, or maybe just a galaxy-shaped drain clog glowing with the light of seven mysterious… Tic Tacs? These floating yellow-white dots are supposed to represent universal truths, but instead, they look like the kind of cosmic jellybeans you’d win at an arcade in exchange for 500 tickets. The swirl itself has that unmistakable Photoshop smudge-tool vibe, like someone tried to make a spiral but got distracted halfway and thought, “eh, good enough—let the universe fill in the rest.”
Then there’s the typography, and oh boy, where to begin. The oversized yellow 7 is bold, yes, but bold in the way a kindergarten counting book is bold—big, primary, and practically screaming, “Now you can count past six!” It completely overwhelms the title, leaving “Universal Laws” looking like a corporate training seminar handout. If you’ve ever been forced to sit in a hotel conference room under fluorescent lighting while someone lectured you about “core values,” this font is already haunting your nightmares.
And as if that wasn’t enough clutter, someone decided to slap a testimonial quote right at the top, because apparently nothing screams professionalism like cramming three different font styles and a block of text into a design that already looks like a motivational poster you’d find at a dentist’s office. That quote is the cherry on this galactic sundae, making the whole thing read less like “cosmic wisdom” and more like “infomercial endorsement.”
In the end, The 7 Universal Laws doesn’t look like a book—it looks like the kind of free flyer you’d get handed outside a meditation retreat. It wants to be profound and universal, but it ends up looking like a middle-school science project posterboard that accidentally discovered WordArt.
If there’s a law of design this cover teaches us, it’s this: Just because you can make your galaxy glow doesn’t mean you should.