The below book covers are successful because of the strong images and large typography. A picture is supposed to tell a thousand words, so when a picture has to tell an entire book it needs to be a strong one. The large typography balances the images by filling the area that would otherwise be empty.
Carol Hayes
Text-based covers such as Carol Hayes' work are less cryptic about the contents of the book, and lend themselves to philosophy books better than image-based covers because they don't try and hide anything from the reader, fitting the idea that philosophy provides a person with a full understanding of something.
Olly Moss
These film posters by Olly Moss both are films which have messages about politics behind them and use political symbolism within the design to give them extra context. The Master Race poster is particularly bold in terms of its use of the swastika and black footprints, that it relies so heavily on the context of the film to make it successful as the arguably controversial nature of it will help it get noticed.
Philosophy Books
Some of the more interesting looking philosophy book covers I've found generally have a rule of thumb where text goes in the top quarter/third of the page with an abstract image below it which is supposedly 'given context' by the title of the book. I question if this truly is the case though, and rather pessimistically think that people read the title and think 'oooh, these pretty shapes and colours must mean something really deep and meaningful'. This can be capitalised on by the cover designer by just throwing together random shapes knowing that people won't know that's what they've done.
For me, the a more literal image is more intriguing. The example in 'well-being & death' illustrates this perfectly. I would struggle to accept that a collection of shapes or lines provoke more thought in anyones mind than the illustration on the front of this book, and provoking thought is, generally, what philosophy does best.
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