Iraq by the Book

"We thought about putting a map on the front or some kind of indicator like that," says Gall. "It just was one element too many," too much visual competition for the long title, the names of the 10 study group members, and the words "Authorized Edition."

He also eschewed the unsubtle red, white and blue palette often seen on this kind of book. "The 9/11 Report," for instance, uses red, white and blue.

Instead, Gall went for black, cream and red, which evoke the colors of the Iraqi flag, providing an intentionally subtle signifier of Iraq that would not overwhelm as a map would have.

With the background settled, Gall turned to typeface and how to organize the cover's text.

"It's really how you're going to organize the hierarchy of information and make it clear and direct," said Gall.

Nothing could be more direct than the no-frills sans serif typeface he chose, and with larger type for one word in particular: Iraq. The word itself packs the cover's punch. It has a similar impact to the date "9/11" on the cover of "The 9/11 Commission Report," where the "11," Ferguson realized, subtly evokes the twin towers.

And the urgency of the Iraq report's subtitle, "The Way Forward -- A New Approach" was underscored in the white stripe on which it is printed.

"I think it has the attributes of being authoritative, accessible and conveying some urgency," says Anne Messitte, the publisher of Vintage, the paperback imprint of Random House.

Helped along by the urgent and seemingly incessant television and radio appearances of its authors, the book with the spare cover is finding its audience. While Vintage declined to give sales figures, the publisher said the book is in its third printing, with 250,000 copies now in print.

That the "The Iraq Study Group Report" looks very much like "The 9/11 Commission Report," which sold more than a million copies, is mostly coincidental, say participants in its publication. Gall and others say the similarity springs from the seriousness of this genre of book cover, intended to convey something as historic as a road map for ending a war.