Why Do Programming Books Have Animals on the Cover?

Eddie Freedman, the creative director at O’Reilly Media, explains that he came across images of strange-looking animals in the late 90s and noticed an intriguing correspondence between technologies and specific animals.

Here are few reasons why O’Reilly Media uses animal images for their book covers.

1. Distinctive recognition 

O’Reilly’s books have distinctive recognition from what other publisher’s bring due to the animal on their cover pages, even on bookstands where there are overcrowded books.

This uniqueness has contributed immensely to the brand’s value system and intangible brand recognition.

In the same vein, animal pictures on book covers make it easier to recognize programming books.

2. Marketing Perks

A book cover is arguably the first and most essential part of a book’s marketing. Its function is to get people to look at the blurbs or the back cover synopsis.

Not just to tell a story. The book cover helps to define the brand.

For instance, O’Reilly’s books are widely known worldwide for their distinctive recognition due to the animal picture cover page their brand is known for.

With such a distinctive look, it was probably inevitable that some O’Reilly books would become known best by the animals on their covers.

An example of this is a seminal book on the practice of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville is mostly known in the software design community (and beyond) as “the Polar Bear book.”

3. Correlating Qualities

According to Freedman, “I came across some odd-looking animal engravings from the 19th century when searching for images for book covers.

They seemed to be a good match for all those strange-sounding UNIX terms and were esoteric enough that I figured they’d probably appeal to programmers. And, as I investigated the attributes of the real animals, I quickly discovered that there were intriguing correspondences between specific technologies and specific animals.”

4. Educate the people on saving and protecting the ecosystem

In Freedman’s “short history,” she felt the impact of her decades of curating images of animals.

Researching the animals made her aware of how many animals are critically endangered in the 21st century due to various reasons such as illegal wide fire trade, habitat destruction, hunting, poaching, and animal/human conflict; some of these animals.

She wrote, “When most of the engravings were created in the 19th century, these animals were plentiful.”

Freedman’s essay pointedly suggests a hope that it will inspire “smart, tech-savvy people like you to come up with new ways to save and protect the world’s wild animals.”

Conclusion

Not all programming books have animal images on their covers but a large portion of them do have different kinds of animal images just because they are created by O’Reilly Media who happens to be an authority in the book publishing industry.

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