For this week’s weekend book cover, Rhonda Parrish asked me for a cover for a collection of her late mother’s poetry.
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.
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.
I like it! The author and her daughter didn’t love the owl element, so I made two variations: no owl, and extra owl.
They preferred the one with no owl, so that’s the final. Huzzah!
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.
March 23, 2015 at 10:48 am
Just a suggestion — what do you think about flipping the mailbox image so that the mailbox is on the right (and isn’t colliding with the word “Love”)? That would help balance out the cover.
March 23, 2015 at 11:18 am
Ooh, yeah, I’ll try that.
March 23, 2015 at 10:50 am
(Also, I liked it with the flying owl. Too bad the author didn’t agree.)
March 23, 2015 at 12:05 pm
I really loved the symbolism of the owl, but him flying off the edge of the page took my eye with him >_<
March 23, 2015 at 12:26 pm
Good point! I totally missed that.
March 23, 2015 at 12:58 pm
What if we flipped the owl?
March 23, 2015 at 8:41 pm
I think that could work! Flip the mailbox photo, then move the owl to the left side so it’s not flying off the page. It’s worth a try!