Diamond Book Covers
I became involved in art from a very young age. When I discovered my love for reading, my interest in developing an interesting narrative through art deepened. Most of my early drawings were focused on creating my own narrative, stories and characters. In keeping with this theme, my senior exhibit project is about creating visually appealing and meaningful book covers that interact with the reader’s imagination in a similar fashion to the content of the story itself. There are many similarities with the creation of a visual artwork and the creation of a written story. There is the same sense of character creation and world building, of asking questions the viewer wants to answer, and of trying to spark that sense of intrigue and curiosity present in every human being. A good book cover achieves all of these things.
In a more practical sense, the world of publishing can be extremely selective so that being published through a traditional publishing house is only 1-2 % likely for writers. This leaves most writers having to self-publish, self-market, hire someone to create their cover or worst-case scenario have to make one themselves. My project Diamond Book Covers would seek to provide a book cover design service that would facilitate the process of self-publishing by creating professional and eye-catching book covers.
My book covers combine digital illustration with typography, through Adobe Photoshop for the illustration and Adobe Illustrator for the formatting of the back cover text. I thumbnail a variety of ideas and choose the strongest composition before blocking in the light environment in grayscale. Once the proper values have been established, I’ll switch to color and render the details until the illustration is complete. Typography is given the same attention in order to create a title that is engaging and completes the cover.
