First Cover Attempt
I decided to play around with designing a cover for The Horse Charmer. With Jumping Thoughts I discovered it is really a matter of trial and error for me to find the right image, picking a font for lettering, and moving it around to get it right. Lucky for me with the ongoing e-book craze covers are getting simpler. What looks great on a hardback doesn't necessarily translate to a thumbnail image. Simple is better now. And in my research last night - translate to: trolling Amazon's site to look at young adult fantasy covers - I discovered that covers are a heck of a lot simpler now. They tend to be dark (but this could be because of the vampire craze) with a single object image or person(s) image with big lettering for the title and author. Makes me a little sad as I've always been fan of the artwork on covers. Some seriously great stuff has shown up on a book cover.
Okay, got off track there. Here is my first attempt for The Horse Charmer
Looks pretty, but very, very simple. I also don't think the font is quite big enough though I like the script since it is a fantasy novel. If you downsize the image the title and author name are harder to read. since the text isn't thick.
Back to the drawing board....
Okay, got off track there. Here is my first attempt for The Horse Charmer
Looks pretty, but very, very simple. I also don't think the font is quite big enough though I like the script since it is a fantasy novel. If you downsize the image the title and author name are harder to read. since the text isn't thick.
As one who was in the printing industry here's my opinion: the script font has always been hard to read especially when it's white on a light-ish background (like sky peaking through trees). For nifty fonts listed under themes, www.dafont.com has some funky ones. And I didn't realize it was a fantasy novel until you said because I thought teen western because of the wheat and colours.
ReplyDeleteWhat I see at the till lately with teen fantasies are ones that look medievally if they're not goth dark.
It is pretty. And as one who has done this - I understand how hard it is. Picking fonts is part of the fun and part of the hell but I'd probably stay away from scripty for the title for when you shrink the image down to thumbnail size. Enjoy the process - scary and vexing as it is. :D
Thanks for your input, Jenna. I've been working on those issues today actually. It's kind of fun futzing around with the different styles and colors.
ReplyDeleteI know. Addicting too. All of a sudden 3 hours can be gone. Poof!
ReplyDeleteI cannot tell you the number of hours spent scrolling through istockphoto.com, dreamstime.com and shutterstock.com looking at graphics. And fonts...oh boy...don't get me started on fonts. I was called a font ninja at my summer job when one of the guys asked me about a font used on some graphic thinger. I hemmed and hawed as I looked at the invite and then went "Oh I know that font! yeah, I can totally do that for you." 10 years of looking at font books paid off I guess. :D
Don't forget that if you're ever going to do print ads, you're going to need a high res image so buy a 300 dpi tiff (which can be kah-ching) to futz with. The type will also look crisper along with the image. (God...you can take the girl out of the print shop but not the print shop out of the girl...)
Anyway...continue having fun...says the one dancing off to look at dreamstime images.
Oh good. So it's perfectly normal to loose hours at dreamstime and shutterstock. I was a little worried there. LOL Yeah, I noticed the websites want the 72 dpi and thought that doesn't seem to be high enough resolution and figured once I settle on one I'll need to make the ebook one 72 dpi and then a second one at the higher res. But thank you for reminding me.
ReplyDeleteFonts, oh man, the sheer number of fonts to choose from is mind-boggling. And I thought picking five images to start with and try out was half the work. :-)