In celebration of April 19th, aka Bicycle Day, I’ve put together a collection of trippy, weird, and sorta-kinda psychedelic cover designs. Some were chosen for their content, others purely for how their designs made me feel. You can always explore the tag “trippy” to see more covers like these.
*If you’re able to provide any missing design credits, please write me at ineedabookcover.site@gmail.com or DM me @zoe-norvell.
Blog post cover image by the extraordinary Brian Blomerth. Be sure to check out his books Bicycle Day (2019), a Technicolor retelling of the discovery of LSD, and Mycelium Wassonii (2021), an account of “the lives and trips of R. Gordon and Valentina Wasson, the pioneering scientist couple responsible for popularizing the use of psychedelic mushrooms in the United States.” Both are published by Anthology Editions/Mexican Summer.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Illustrator: Ralph Stedman, 1971
Ways of Being by James Bridle
Designer: Pablo Delcan
The Psychedelic CEO by W. Murray Rodgers
Babble On by Andrew Brobyn
Designer: Laura Boyle
Vagablonde by Anna Dorn
Designer: Jaya Nicely
Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping by Derek Jarman
Designer: Theo Inglis
Aesthetica by Allie Rowbottom
Designer: Jaya Nicely
Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou
Designer: Darren Haggar, Illustrator: Aleia & Sam Copeland
End of the World House by Adrienne Celt
Designer: David Litman
Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
Riverhead, 2014
No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Designer: Lauren Peters-Collaer
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Illustrator: Salvador Dalí
The Comedown by Rebekah Frumkin
Dead Astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer
Designer: Rodrigo Corral Studio
The Tryst by Monique Roffey
Designer: June Park
Pathological by Sarah Fay
Designer: Pete Garceau
Till the Wheels Fall Off by Brad Zellar
Designer: Alban Fischer
Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones
Coffee House Press, 2019
In Moonland by Miles Allinson
Designer: Allison Colpoys
Hollow by B. Catling
Designer: Pablo Delcan
The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey
Designer: Katie Klimowicz
Fungipedia by Lawrence Millman
Designer: Chris Ferrante
Fieldwork by Iliana Regan
Designer: Morgan Krehbiel
Fruiting Bodies by Kathryn Harlan
Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality by Lindsay Wong
Designer: Emma Dolan
The Secret Life of Fungi by Aliya Whiteley
Designer: Faceout Studio/SpencerFuller
The Psilocybin Handbook for Women by Jennifer Chesak
Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion by Michelle Janikian
Mushroom Botanical Art by Toshimitsu Fukiharu
How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan
The Essential Ginsberg edited by Michael Schumacher
Designer: Milan Bozic
High Weirdness by Erik Davis
The Timothy Leary Project by Jennifer Ulrich
The Most Dangerous Man in America by Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis
Sacred Knowledge by William A. Richards
Acid Test by Tom Shroder
A Tiger in the Land of Dreams by Tiger Tateishi
