Cover #1

Can you even read the title? Yeah, me either. In cover design you want to make sure your title is clearly readable! If I wanted to use this background image, I would need to put a shape of some sort behind the title. And I should probably change the font to something a little easier to read.

Did you see the author name? It’s kind of small, but it’s mostly on the white so you can sort of see it. I would have made it larger and would probably have to put something behind it as well.

Hmm, I don’t think this background is going to work. It’s too busy, hard to see what’s going on, and the focus is on whatever those things are in the bottom of the photo.

I’d just start over.

Cover #2

I know, you are probably looking at this cover and wondering what’s wrong with it.

When you are creating a cover, especially if it’s going to be a paperback book, you need to make sure the words are at least a quarter of an inch from the sides. I’d stick with at least a half an inch. Why? Because in the printing the words could be cut off, or they will just reject the cover to keep that from happening.

Words that go almost to the edge also give it a feeling that you might be missing part of a word. With this title I would make the font smaller. And probably center “Dunes” right over those darker clouds to pull it closer to the subject in the photo.

Another thing in this cover is the author’s name. Once again it is small, and probably too close to the bottom. To be on the safe side, I would move it up. But then you would run into the subject. If you couldn’t move the entire photo up, I would consider putting the author name under the title.

Cover #3

This sounds like a fun Christmas story. But the cover has some problems.

First it’s a little busy. Adding those mittens was probably not a good idea. And, while the wreath is kind of cute, it doesn’t look like it belongs. It would look less cluttered without them.

Next it’s kind of faded. Or, as my sister would say, “Why’d you wash all the color out?” You want the cover of your book or story to catch someone’s eye. This cover doesn’t have enough color to do that. However, if I had left the color full, then it would be hard to read the title. Hmm.

If you had to have both pictures (I would personally take the top one off because I think headless people look silly), then I would move the person over to the right so there was a little more room, and see if I could get the title in there. If that didn’t work I could put a banner of some kind between the two images and put the title there.

The author name is actually good there. It’s not too close to the bottom, and it’s not so small you can’t see it.

Cover #4

What do you think of this one? Pretty eye catching as far as colors go.

I don’t know about you, but my eyes immediately went to “Remember” And then up to the top to work out what it said. Oh, and the author name isn’t centered.

Can we talk about fonts? Yeah. You really don’t want these fonts together. And that top line is hard to read. If I were designing this for real I might have left the “A” in that font, depending on what the story was about. But “4th” is hard to read. I need to find a font that is clear. And that final word? Ugh. It doesn’t fit the cover. I needed something not as round, a font that spoke of precision and straight lines.

Spacing is another problem with this title. While “to” may be centered under “A 4th” it appears to be a little to the side. And it sure if far away from that first line. To correct it, I would make “to” in it’s own text box. That way I could move it anywhere I wanted. Separating the text into boxes by line can be a big benefit when designing a cover.