Book Cover Design - The Guardian

My work friend has asked me to design a cover for her first ever book. The book is called "The Guardian" and is a teenage fiction novel featuring angels and demons.

With this knowledge in hand I created a mood board to show my client what ideas I had in mind.

The mood board featured various imagery of angels, artistic styles and various types of font that I believe would work well. My client was happy with what I had shown her and picked out her favourite font from the selection I had provided.


For the next step,  I created a mock up design using standard dimensions of paper-back book covers. I decided to to use my "crouching angel" drawing that I had created earlier, however I went over it with a brush tipped pen and water to create calligraphy effect.

I went for a grungy/dirty feel as I think it works well with the drawing style and the genre of the book.

I added the title and authors name using separate fonts, if the book is published I will have to make sure  that I've bought the licence to use these fonts.

After some feedback from my client I have created a second mock up design for the cover. 

My client wanted the cover to include a young woman's face as to reflect the main female character in the book. I drew a sketch of a face, scanned it in and manipulated it on photoshop so that I would be in the back ground of the image, but slightly faded so not to conflict with the rest of the images in the design. I also amended the author's name to her chosen Pen name.

I am now awaiting feedback of the second cover mock up.

Follow Lindsay's blog to find out more about the book and to keep up to date with developments.