Evolution of a Book Cover

Back when I was a regular reader of Quill and Quire ("Canada's Magazine of Book News and Reviews"), one of my favourite columns showed the book cover design process. In the same spirit, I thought it would be interesting to share some of the early design concepts for The Samurai Poet.

1) The very first cover showed a picture of Shisendo with the title and author name written in the Papyrus font. Papyrus seemed fitting at the time because it evoked an ink brush effect, which is appropriate considering the main character of the novel is a master of the brush. Little did I know at the time, but Papyrus has a reputation as a bit of a cheesy font. Once I saw how often it is used in (what seems to me at least) wrong contexts, I realized it was not the right font. I won't share a photo of this cover here since it has appeared a couple times already on the blog.

2) Even though I knew the font wasn't right for me, the photo was worth keeping. Using a combination of FX Photo Studio Pro and Adobe Photoshop Elements, I tried to turn the photo into something a little more cover-worthy. For my first attempt, I tried black & white, thinking that it might work well with eReaders that use e-ink.

I liked the basic execution of the concept. The vertical bar on the left helped me keep the original proportion of the photo and include some Japanese writing on the cover: shisendo no samurai shijin, roughly translating as The Samurai Poet of Shisendo.

I thought the font for the English title looked elegant, but my wife vetoed it. She didn't explain why, but I've learned to trust her intuitive judgment in design matters. My main concern was that a black and white cover wouldn't stand out in online bookstores or on an iBookshelf.

3) I still wasn't completely off the black and white train, however, because of my interest in Japanese woodblock prints. The next attempt was a complete fail, but at least it gave me a chance to see the woodblock effect.

I probably don't need to spend too much time explaining why this cover just doesn't work. For one thing, the image is too small. Even though the red font injects some colour, there is no sense of balance between the Japanese, English, and the image. The black background also seems to expose just how much dead space there is overall.

Moving on.

So bad, I didn't bother to re-export or save it

4) My next try was never developed past the concept stage, so it looks pretty rough. Most of the the familiar design elements are still there from the first one, but you can see I tried to add some colour with a textured background. The colour kind of works to create a "tatami mat" effect but it doesn't go well with the faded black and white image below it.

I did learn a few important things from this effort though. I needed to go full colour, even if it meant dropping the side bar and changing the proportions of the image a bit. Even though I knew what the original image was supposed to look like, I knew it wouldn't matter to readers if the final image looked right for a book cover. Now my secret is out. Oops.

This might be a good time to mention that I was also able to address two of my pet peeves about book covers. The font of the title is larger than that of the author, and nowhere on the cover does it say "a novel." Somehow, that is something readers always seem able to figure out on their own.

5) In the end, I returned to something that looked like the original cover from years ago, but much improved. I used an antique treatment on the photo to create a parchment effect in the background as a subtle reference to the calligraphy element in the novel. I also played with the colour a bit to avoid a monochromatic sepia tone. This enhanced the green in the corners to surreal levels, but because there was so little colour, it wasn't an issue. The font also stayed the same, but adding a shadow to the author and a 3-D effect to the title gave it enough weight to sustain a cover. One colleague who critiqued the cover for me noted that the title's appearance had a Roman aspect to it that created the instant impression that the genre is Historical Fiction. I ended up with a professional looking cover that quickly situates the novel's genre and setting, making a promise to the reader I believe it delivers. It's out of my hands now and I look forward to hearing what readers decide. You can find a list of retailers at my website if you're interested: www.travisbelrose.ca

Post Script

If you look closely in the bottom left of the cover, you will notice an almost ghostly image of a person walking through Shisendo. Incredibly, I did not notice her presence until the end of the design process. I presume that my eyes were so drawn to the Moon Room turret on Shisendo that I never really attended to the other features of the photo. Although I still had options to change the photograph or black out her image, I decided it was best to leave her there as a subtle reminder that we in the present are incongruous interlopers whenever we try to look back in the past and reconstruct what it was like. Whether we are tourists, writers, or readers, we will always be limited by our contemporary context. The other reason is that you can't notice her when viewing the cover as a thumbnail on a website or your eReader bookshelf. So there.