ON MY BOOK COVER DESIGNS

Much of my career as a professional journalist involved designing newspaper pages, looking for ways to attract a reader to a story while also fitting the headline, text, and accompanying photo into what were often challenging spaces around jagged stacks of ads.

With a solid high school background in visual art itself, I came to the graphic side of design with a deepened appreciation for illustration, logos, advertising campaigns, letterheads, magazine covers, and, of course, book jackets – and I could be sharply critical of what I saw presented to the general public.

As I remember photojournalism guru Chuck Scott scoffing as he looked at a prissy photo-essay page, “That looks like art director work! Give me something more direct!” Or something like that. The point was, he didn’t want fussy or cute.

I’m the same way. Keep it clean, for starters. Have a strong graphic image. And keep the type to a minimum.

The cover to my first published novel suffered from the cut-up approach. It just looked klutzy, despite the best intentions of the lotus pattern imposed over a photo. And the second entry, from an early ebook venture, never really had a cover.

So the opportunity to work with Jeremy Taylor on my Smashwords edition covers gave me a chance to put my concept into play. A strong photo with little more type than the title and author.

The photos were purchased from inexpensive stock collections and selected as an indirect homage to Richard Brautigan’s playful portraits from his Avon series back in the hippie era. His covers remain some of my favorites.

Let’s not forget ways ebook fronts differ from regular paper editions. They’re smaller, thumbnail size, really, with little room for blurbs or the like. It’s one quick look rather than turning the volume around in your hands and reflecting, however briefly.

So that’s what we have there.

When I reinstated my own Thistle/Flinch imprint as a PDF ebook line here at WordPress, the cover design fell to me, for all of the budgetary reasons you’d expect in offering free editions.

Again, I’ve stuck to the basics – strong graphic image, minimal type.

What’s been fun for me is working within a Word program rather than venturing out, say, into Gimp or beyond. That is, in light of the constraints on my time, I’m sticking with basics.

As a writer, though, I’d had no need to play with colored type or pages, much less insert photos. I’m old-fashioned that way, viewing this action as a typewriter, mostly. Even my WordPress blogging fits closely with my print-publishing orientation.

Well, you can see what I’ve done. I rather like it. And it’s been fun. Care to take a look at the full lineup?

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See what’s available as Smashwords and Thistle/Flinch.