For this week’s weekend book cover, Rhonda Parrish asked me for a cover for a collection of her late mother’s poetry.

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I liked the idea of snowy owl imagery. Unexpected difficulty: owl faces are hilarious. I couldn’t build a contemplative poetry cover out of this guy. To get around that, I went looking for an image of a snowy owl flying away. I thought that included some relevant symbolism as well.

Then: background. Turns out Rhonda (editor, author, doer of all the things) is also a great photographer. Her Flickr account gave me plenty to work with. I really liked this lonely mailbox, and I like the imagery, that this book would be stuffed with messages the author left behind for her loved ones.

snowy-owl-12893020 mailbox_sm

For the font, I wanted a script that was neither too flowery nor too grungy. One called “Chemist” seemed to fill the bill. I put a shadow behind it to help bring out the words. For the subtitle and author name, I’m just a perpetual sucker for Century Gothic and its variants.

I colorized the owl and mailbox, then eventually the post, then put a gradient behind the author name, then desaturated things a bit.

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I like it! The author and her daughter didn’t love the owl element, so I made two variations: no owl, and extra owl.

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They preferred the one with no owl, so that’s the final. Huzzah!

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This one came together so smoothly, it was awesome. If I could change one thing, I’d put something across the top or in the top right corner. Maybe part of a representative poem?

What do you think? How’s the composition? Does the cover seem to match the contents of the book? What tweaks would you make?

FONTS, TOP TO BOTTOM

  • Chemist
  • Century Gothic
  • Century Gothic Bold

IMAGE SOURCES

TIME TO CREATE

  • All of two and a half hours including image searches and final tweaks.

See all my book cover designs here. Inquiries accepted.

I write fiction too!