Summer Rain

My friend and aspiring author, Lindsay Michaels has recently realised a book on the Amazon Kindle Store. She asked me to design the cover for her romantic novel called Summer Rain.

After some discussion with Lindsay and some market research I came with a simple sketch design of a couple kissing accompanied with bright pink script which contrasts well. Hopefully this cover will help Lindsay's book stand out from the crowd and be a success!

I am very proud and excited to be part of Lindsay's project and can't wait for the next book and to work with Lindsay again!

Summer Rain by Lindsay Michaels can be found HERE.

Follow Lindsay on Twitter.

Book Cover Final Design - The Guardian

After much tweaking and feedback from my client I have created the final design for The Guardian book cover. The design now features a young girl's face within the silhouette of the angel image. The text is the same as previous drafts, with the added subtitle of "the brotherhood series".

I decided to add some falling feathers into the background and a blue hue overall which I think adds more depth the the design.

The book will be first released as an e-book on Amazon's Kindle store and hopefully will become published into print at a later date.

I have thoroughly enjoyed working on this design and with my client, Lindsay. She has been very helpful with her feedback and constructive with her criticism, it was a great insight into client/designer relations in the design industry.

Please follow Lindsay's blog and twitter for all the latest news on the The Guardian.

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.

Book Cover Photo Manipulation

As part of my design project for the The Big Sleep book cover competition I created an image that show cases the design on a real book. I used Adobe Photoshop to over lay the design onto a photograph of a book with the same dimensions. 

I believe that this image allows you to see what the design would look like in the real world and works well to communicate the design message.

The Big Sleep Book Cover - Final Design

I have created the final design of the The Big Sleep cover for the Penguin Design Award and I have just submitted it to Penguin. I am happy with the overall design, even though I had difficulty creating it on Adobe Illustrator.

I now have to just wait for the competition to close on the 9th April and for the entries to be judged. Fingers crossed I get through to the next round!

You can view the full Final Design here.

The Big Sleep Cover - Silhouettes

I have created 4 possible silhouettes to be used on The Big Sleep book cover that I'm designing, I have photographed myself in appropriate clothing to avoid any copyright infringement.

Each silhouette is in a slightly different pose, I now have to decide which will look best on the cover...

Silhouette 1

Silhouette 2

Silhouette 3

Silhouette 4

The Big Sleep Cover Mock Ups

source: Penguin

I have made another step in designing my entry for the Penguin Design Award competition.

I have created 3 book cover mock ups using Adobe Illustrator, I am trying to determine which font combinations works best with the overall design.

The dimensions are to Penguin's specifications and I have included the Penguin Logo.

Click on the links below:

Mock Up 1

Mock Up 2

Mock Up 3

The Big Sleep cover design competition

I am aiming to enter the Penguin Design Award competition. This year, entrants are tasked with designing with the symbolic crime/detective novel by Raymond Chandler.

After reading the book, there is a few scenes and characters that could be used in a design concept.


Below are a few examples of previous cover designs, all have a common theme of guns and girls, it's my feeling that these themes have been used to death for this type of novel, so I'm looking to create something slightly different...

I have created a preliminary mock up of an idea I've had, as seen below:

I have used a very simple graphic image, with the main character  casting a shadow of a knight chess piece in a doorway. The Knight idea came from the running theme in the book of Marlowe (the lead character) being a knight in a dirty, corrupted world.

The deadline for competition submissions is the 9th of April, I have some more development work to do to be ready for that approaching deadline.