#the crystal ball was the hardest and the final result didn't turn out as i wanted it to be but ok it's still pretty

[alienpines]

studies

[candelapzz]

Book Covers

Designing the book covers for my short stories had been on my mind for a couple of weeks and so I decided to give it a go! I had a couple of ideas for the creation of the three designs but in some cases I changed my mind as I went. I’m happy with all of the results of my work and during this activity I was able to hone my skills since I hadn’t done an illustration cover for a long time.

For the first short story I did an illustration-based cover. It took me around an hour and a half to finish it since I had to draw the background and the letters of the title, which was actually the hardest part of the process. The cover shows a crystal ball and a yellow umbrella which are elements from my Halloween story. In the ‘I’ of ‘witch’ I drew a hat and in the one of ‘vampire’ I decided to draw a fang because both elements represent these beings. Designing the book spine was also a challenge since I didn’t seem to get the right proportions for the mockup, but I managed to make it fit at the end. Even though I had made mistakes in the process I thought that the thicker spine could be considered a pacemaker, so I didn’t erase the other version.

My first idea for November’s cover was to use star vectors that resembled a colourful galaxy (since the narration revolves around space beings) but when I proceeded, I decided that doing a simple cover would look more professional. Instead, I created a pattern with these figures and used a two-colour based palette. I chose a sans serif font for the title and then added stripes and dots in the shade of the title to give the cover a more jovial touch. After that, I used Lightroom to enhance some colours and details.

This was the only cover that was clear in my mind and whose design didn't change from my original idea. I have been designing with free to use images (creative commons) for a long time, and I worked with one of unsplash.com (web with these kinds of pictures) photos of a Christmas tree for the background. Since in the other covers I had used my own handwriting and a simple font, I chose a calligraphy font instead to add variety to my latest creations. This was the less challenging cover in terms of process. However, choosing the best photography and colours for the letters were the aspects that took me the most time to get done. I'm always indecisive while designing because I tend to overthink my choices, which makes me struggle during the process until I am finally satisfied, but this time I didn't overthink it so much and I realised that the book cover was turning out as I hoped to be.

[Week of the 24/01/2021]