Maybe two weeks ago?
It's around five o'clock in the evening and I'm sitting here @Embermine working on who knows what. That feels like months ago. My work is always changing but there's never a lack of stuff to do. Pretty sure I had the Royals game playing in the corner of my screen. Eternal thanks to @JamesDrake for arming me with 25" inches of retina display and the ram to make any Adobe app tremble.
Perhaps to delight in one of his subjects busily working on the sexy machine he so graciously found room in a start-up budget for he comes to my desk instead with a simple yet lofty request.
"I need you to make a book cover for my wife. Can you do it tonight?"
Eyes dart to the clock. Back to James. "Sure, sounds fun."
I snag a beer from our mini-fridge. Looks like supper's on hold for now. Start-up life remember.
Anyways I think book covers are loads of fun to create. And think about the true reason we become designers in the first place. We want to see people wearing and reading and drinking out of our stuff. Okay that's not actually true of course. But I remember exactly the first time I saw someone wearing a t-shirt I'd designed. It's an instant jolt of pride that takes a awhile to go away. Okay let's come back to earth.
I begin my design. No sketching. No Brainstorming. No time. Luckily, James' wife had already selected a photo she wanted to serve as the focus of the cover. Clients with pre-selected art usually make me nervous but it turned out the picture she chose was well, perfect. This cover practically designed itself upon seeing the image. It featured a semi-nude woman lying on her back with arms raised above her. I immediately notice the way her hair draped and fanned out with the distinct look of a blooming flower. Oh, did I not mention this is an erotica novel? Chicks will dig that, right?
Anyways, I see this visual floral connection in her hair and head right on over to Adobe stock to find a nice image of a lotus. (Book title is "The Paper Lotus") Once I find a keeper I wave my magic photoshop wand at it for about an hour or so and shazam!–we've cooked up a halfway decent erotica book cover on a moments notice.
Here's the final version of the cover.
Hope you like it! And all you kinky one's out there check out the book! The Paper Lotus by Blakely Winslow Danes.
