I’ll first show off her new cover art, created by us, and then I’ll tell you to head over to her blog to read more about the creative process and symbolism behind the story. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to read this one.

If you’ve written a book, I don’t have to tell you what you’ve given up to do it. Hours upon hours of your time. You’ve bared your soul onto the paper (or laptop). Social engagements, family obligations, even daily chores such as eating and showering may have taken a back seat while you were writing your literary masterpiece.

And now that the book is complete, all you want to do is get it out into the world. You haven’t given up this much of your life just to have the book barely get a passing glance on the shelf (or online shelf). You need a cover that will match your words. One that will give your future readers reason to pause when their eyes glimpse your cover. Is this the book they’ve been looking for?

But you’re a writer, not a designer. How do you convey to someone, using words, what you want them to create, using their vision?

Simple. You work with a designer who wants to know more than just title and author name. You work with someone who wants to get to know you and your work. How to start? Send us a sample chapter if you’d like. Send us a biography of you (we’ll need it for the back cover, anyway, if you’re doing a print version). Send us what the book cover looks like in your dreams. The colors you think your main characters would like. Who your readers will be. We will take your words, and translate it to become your art. Your cover art.

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Recently we had the opportunity to work with the super-talented Elizabeth Ann West on her debut novel, originally titled Imperfect Timing. She actually asked me this week if I wouldn’t mind writing a blog post so that she could share the experience, and the importance of custom covers, with other writers. Absolutely!

Elizabeth’s journey with mod began when she came to me with two ideas that she’d actually put together herself (not a necessary step, but one that did allow us and her to examine what was and wasn’t working, visually). Here was her first try at a cover concept:

Elizabeth's second idea

Good idea, for sure. But, as a designer, I can see that Elizabeth’s idea could be taken so much farther. I was super-excited to help her with this concept.

Before we could shoot the art for the cover, we would need to design a wedding invitation. Created perfectly for her characters. I treated this project as I would any other wedding invitation – I asked her to give me information about the bride and groom. Who were they? What type of wedding would they like? How many guests? What color scheme? These characters may be fiction, but they still deserve the attention any other bride and groom would get.

Elizabeth gave me all the details. She’d make a great wedding planner, by the way … Johnathan and Alexis were to have a 1920s themed wedding, with a Great Gatsby-themed engagement party. So the invitations should take on a 1920s vibe, but not so much that the book looks as if it was taking place in the 1920s. And of course, they needed to be simple enough to still be able to tell what they were with a big Cancelled across the front of them. So, I got to work, and came up with 3 invitations for her to choose between:

The bride and groom (via Elizabeth, of course), were drawn to the first invitation. Instead of pink, though, Elizabeth wanted to see the invitation done in gold. We finalized the gold tones that would be the invitation, had them printed professionally, then got to work photographing the cover.

I should probably mention that by this point, I’d been calling the book “Cancelled” each time I spoke to Elizabeth about it. She decided she actually liked that name for a title better, so Cancelled it was. This worked out great for the design because we could really play up the Cancelled stamp.

Initially, our idea was to have a white or soft gray cover, which would allow the invitation to stand on its own.

But, as he was doing the photography, Jeff found himself thinking of a slightly different idea. He Jeff decided to reshoot the cover but with a contrasting background. He added some flowers to the shoot, which ended up lending some depth that would turn out to be perfect when we moved on to designing the spine and back cover for the print series. Both Elizabeth and I were sold on the black background. I created the final cover design, shown here:

As you can see, from the beginning concept until the end result, the look of the cover changed quite dramatically. But each step was closer and closer to linking Elizabeth’s book with her readers. The book is fantastic, by the way. Pick up your copy here if you haven’t already – and stay tuned, because it’s only the first in the series!

You wrote a book in 30 days. What comes next?

For those of you who haven’t heard of National Novel Writing Month, you may be wondering why a large segment of the Internet has been a bit quieter during the month of November. That’s because writers all over the world are currently pushing their creativity in order to accomplish what is for many a lifetime goal: Writing a book. Yes, it (or a first draft of it) can be done in a month. No, this is certainly not easy (I am a two-time NaNoWriMo finisher myself, so I know the joy and pain of pushing yourself to a deadline such as this.)

So, as 11:59 pm November 30 comes and goes, you’ll hear a collective sigh of relief as keyboards get a break and writers practically crawl their way out of desk chairs, relieved and accomplished, exhausted and proud.

But now what?

It’s easy to push your book to the back burner. The first draft is done, Thanksgiving comes and goes and you likely will write your way through it (two years ago, I was buried in my laptop while my family drove on the beach at Catalina Island, searching for Wild Horses. I lifted my head to see the horses, then was back to it.) You’re ready to just enjoy the rest of the holidays without thinking much about the book itself. You did it, and it’ll be there when you’re ready to deal with it in January. But then the new year comes and with it more projects and responsibilities and if you’re not careful – you’ll find yourself looking back much, much later, not recalling many details about the book or if it’s publishable or what exactly you intended to do with it anyway.

That’s where MOD comes in. Hand over your NaNoWriMo book and let us take it to the next level with you. We can help you with everything you need to turn your book into something the world is ready to read. Check out our services page for more details about book cover design, interior formatting, copy editing and other self-publishing needs.

And, if you need to step away from that computer just to breathe for a moment, we understand. Just don’t step away too long. Because between now and January 31, 2012, if you send us your winner’s certificate from NaNoWriMo (we’ll even take past years’ certificates) and mention the promo code: CrazyWriter when you contact us about your book publishing, we’ll give you 30% off of the full price of any of your design, formatting, or copy editing needs.

You have created a work of art. Now it’s time to show the world.

The answer is that not all of the photos are going to lend themselves to book covers. And, as with all graphic design, sometimes less is more. So, some of the images that came out strong looked horrible once we tried to weave in text. In the end, I came up with three covers I was equally happy with, and I was ready to share them with Amy.

Option 1

The image in this first cover spoke to me even during the photo shoot. I loved the black silhouetted vines. It felt very dramatic and thrilling and dangerous, which I thought lent well to conveying the message of an emotional affair. I gave the main headline a bold, stark font with an embossed look so that it would give a 3D appearance in eBook format. I sent this proof along with this message to Amy:

Silhouetted vines symbolize the dark side of emotional affairs in this cover version. This stands in contrast to the color and font choices of the word emotional – which represents that it can appear to light and romantic, until the darkness sets. The white and blue background represents that there is hope beyond the thorny black, beyond the entanglement.

Option 2

Option 2 made me happy because it was so green, and Amy had mentioned she liked green. I altered the title font slightly to give it a vine appearance. I like the way the g and the l are reaching for each other but never quite connecting. It feels like a marriage in the beginning stages of unravel. This is the message I sent Amy with this proof:

The title is trapped between the vines in this version, and the words blend with the color of vines, showing the entanglement. The vines’ entanglement starts simply; at the top of the photograph it is loosely wrapped around the vine, demonstrating how it begins. But by the bottom of the photo, the entanglement has grown messy and complicated.

Option 3

Option 3 had all the makings of a fantasy. I choose a lightweight, dreamlike handwritten font for the subtitles. The clouds contrasted with the entangled vines, and the green leaves were just about to fall into nothingness.

The words are literally entangled with the vines in this photograph. The clouds and the subtitle font are designed to give the cover a daydream-like feel, as a woman would feel as she begins her emotional affair. However, the stick on the right side of the photo represents the person who has been entangled – and she is hanging by a thread.

 Amy loved them all, and she was torn between option 1 and option 2. She wasn’t too sure about the pink font, but once she decided on option 1, it was easy to switch to red – red conveys passion, and in many ways could even more appropriately show the heat that an emotional affair brings – both positively and negatively.

So, now that you know how we arrived at the book cover, don’t you want to read what’s inside?

When our friend and client, Amy, told me she’d written a book entitled Entangled, and she wanted me to design the cover, I was elated. Book covers are one of my very favorite things to design. Probably because I grew up with my nose in a book so I know how important they can be.

She had some great ideas for her cover. She was thinking something with a vine would help tell her story. She even sent me a couple of stock images that she had in mind, so I got to see a visual interpretation of what she was thinking. That definitely helps to ensure that writer and artist are on the same page. So, I took a look at the stock image comps to see how they would translate to book cover. There were a couple of issues. Stock image 1, a branch, had all the makings of a dramatic and strong cover. But the crop wasn’t quite right. It was something I could have forced to work, if I had to, but I just felt like the cover needed to be better than that. Image 2 was an interesting look, very old-timey and classic, but Amy didn’t like that the branches weren’t in the chair. I thought she might’ve had something there, but I agreed with her, the branch didn’t entangle with the chair and didn’t quite send the right message.

So Jeff and I loaded up his D200 D300 and headed out for a custom photo shoot. I told him about the images Amy had sent me, and I told him a few ideas of my own. And it just so happened my grandmother’s property would likely be the perfect setting for this shoot. So, we set up shop and started shooting. Here’s a few of the images we came up with and why:

First, I thought about what the chair indicated in the original stock image Amy had sent. The book is a woman’s guide to dealing with an emotional affair and how to save a marriage. In this case, a chair represents stability, direction. It’s a clear place where one is “supposed” to sit. So a chair with vines would represent, perhaps, a person who is presented with a slightly unclear direction. The chair no longer feels comfortable or welcome. Here’s how we interpreted that:

And then I thought about how to put this in context of a relationship. In a stable union, perhaps two chairs next to each other would give each person in the couple a clear place. Side by side. But perhaps one of the seats has become entangled with vines. Now one person is still perfectly comfortable in the relationship, but the other person is no longer sure of a direction. So, we added another chair and kept shooting:

But in any relationship, what one person does certainly affects the other. So while one person is dealing with the discomfort, is the other person really sitting idly by, oblivious? No, chances are, it is affecting that person, too. Here’s an interpretation:

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Ok, so now that the chair photos were taken, it was time to focus on what was my personal favorite: the vines. I liked that the vines could be simple, dramatic, and strong. A book cover doesn’t need to be complicated to convey a clear message. So, some closeups of vines were definitely in the cards. Amy mentioned she liked the color green so I wanted to make sure we got lots of images with green as a theme. And we grabbed one very dramatic silhouette that was mostly black.

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Another idea I had was taking those vines and mixing them with a cloud background. Someone in the throes of any sort of new relationship certainly has his or her head in the clouds. But the vine shows that although the clouds provide the perfect picture of fantasy, the vines are entangling and sharp.

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Now that we had our photos taken, it was time to see what they would look like as actual book covers for Entagled. Come back tomorrow to see what worked and what didn’t.

We have recently been given the pleasure of working with author Amy J. Bennett as she creates her debut book, Entangled, which was officially announced today on her blog. I have to say that we are so pleased with how the cover design turned out and we are so happy to be a part of the project. After designing the cover, she asked me to put on my copy editing hat, and I now know this book like the back of my hand. I plan to blog more about the cover design and how it was designed, but for now, I’ll say this: make sure you mark 11/11/11 on your calendar – you are not going to want to miss this book release.

That would be the only reason I haven’t yet read this new book, which has only been out for a couple of weeks. But I do feel like I know quite a bit about it, simply because MOD had the pleasure of designing the cover.

The debut novel of Elizabeth Ann West features a soon-to-be groom who has a growing problem – literally. A former one-night-stand shows up with some baby news. Can he handle her, his problems with his company, and of course, save his future marriage?

I don’t know the answers yet, either. Elizabeth and I are working on her print on demand cover now, which will be out soon, and I’ll be one of the first to buy it. But if you have an e-reader, go ahead and and download away – she’s been getting rave reviews!

It’s simple to use. It also has enough options that should you choose, you can make some really great things with it. I’ve spent the past few days going through iphone photos and seeing what kind of magic I can make …

 Arizona sunset before:

Somewhere between Las Vegas and Phoenix ...

Arizona sunset after:

MIX restaurant menu before:

MIX restaurant menu after:

Starbucks before:

Starbucks after:

I’ll put some more of the photos I’ve edited on my personal blog if you want to take a look.

At just $2.99, I found this app well worth it. Happy photo editing!

But there were no computers or police scanners or even clocks at this gathering. Only the lake, burgers and beer.

This past weekend, many of my former colleagues and I gathered at Lake Wylie to celebrate a place we’d once known during our journalism careers – The Herald newspaper. We laughed and talked and told stories and enjoyed each others’ company.

The person planning the event, Ken, asked everyone to submit stories about their lives in the early days of working in the newsroom. He asked me to gather those responses – and what better way to do that, than in newspaper form?

Here are the pages I designed ahead of the event:

Of course, not everyone submitted answers, and not all the stories were told. I heard a couple more at the event that I just had to share with you – they can be found on my personal blog, here. Enjoy your insider’s look into what newspaper life was really like!

Today Google announces a new initiative: Comic Sans for Everyone. To the dismay of graphic designers and web programmers everywhere, Google is going to make Comic Sans the default font across all Google products on April 4th.

“Whether it’s search results, text ads, emails, or documents, our research has consistently shown that the most effective way to achieve user happiness and higher conversion rates is to use the Comic Sans font.”

Thankfully, this is joke. For years now, Google has been the master of the April Fools prank, and this year is no exception. What really puts a polish on this one is that Google has made a Chome browser extension that renders all web pages in Comic Sans, as well as creating and Easter egg (of sorts) that automatically changes the font of your results page when you Google Comic Sans. That not enough for you? Then Google Helvetica and see what happens.

Do you love Comic Sans and do not understand why graphic designers bash it? Head over to Comic Sans Criminal for a quick lesson on how not to use Comic Sans, as well as some alternatives.

Also, for those of you keeping count, Google has actually done a few pranks today. I’ll leave you with one more, and you can find the rest on your own.