O'Reilly Media book covers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
O'Reilly Media is known for their distinctive book covers, which usually feature a woodcut of an animal.
The animal is often chosen because of its literal ("Programming Python" has a python on its cover), figurative ("JavaScript: The Definitive Guide" has a rhino species native to the island of Java) or humorous (a grotesque toad was chosen for "Windows XP Annoyances for Geeks") connotations.
These often follow themes: for example, a camel was chosen for "Programming Perl" and then a llama (morphologically similar to a small camel) was subsequently picked for the introductory "Learning Perl".
Other examples:
- Webmaster in a Nutshell - spider - pun on "the web"
- Oracle (series) - insects - humorous snipe about Oracle software being "buggy"?
[edit] External Links
- O'Reilly's page on the full list of animals
- Article about book covers "Nature and Narratives: The Romantic Structure of O’Reilly Technical Books Published in The Review Of Communication Vol. 6, nos 4, October 2006, pp. 358-364
