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A few weeks ago, I interviewed some local Brisbane authors about their new book “Dream Raider“. I was particularly impressed by the book cover itself, designed and created by Anthony Puttee. It is striking, evocative and the target audience love it.
I interviewed Anthony about the process of doing the cover, as it is something many self-published authors struggle with (including myself!). The video was done at the Brisbane Writer's Festival hence the background noise. It was a fun weekend!
The video describes:
- How Ant started out with pencil drawings and moved into Photoshop later
- How he wanted to focus on the strong branding colours for the main villain
- The aim is for a series of books, with different colour schemes of the tones/mood of adventure
- The cover needed to jump out at people so the aim was eye-catching
- The design went through a number of iterations
- Ant is a commercial artist and painted it himself
- The font has chips out the letters for detail
- The cover was tested with YA audiences, the aim is to ignite their imagination
- If you are self-publishing and need a cover design, track down artists through Twitter and Facebook. Use freelance graphic designers or artists for an original cover
- Make sure you have a half page write-up of what you want your book cover to say to people as a starting point
You can find Ant at JohnnyMarsh.net or on Twitter @johnnymarshnet
View Comments (2)
Wow! Anthony has really, I mean REALLY, thought about his cover. That's something that more and more writers really need to do. It's true that people do judge a book by it's cover. Working at the World's Biggest Bookstore has shown me that time and time over. You have less than a millisecond to catch someone's attention so make sure you do just that with a cover that rocks.
I have worked with Ant for many years, his attention to detail is incredible. Ant looks at things from angles you don't even know exist. The cover you see was always changing and improving right up until it was sent to be printed. I'm sure he looks at it today and thinks, you know what I could still improve that. I think our book cover is fantastic, thanks Ant
Kev