It’s a silly cover with all kinds of little things on it to keep people
looking at it. Was once a Source Book title. is now over at Bristol Park
Books for whom repackaged it as a Hardcover.
When I was heavily into NPR years ago, I was a huge fan of this show, so I was enthusiastic when hired by Source Books to do the cover of Feldman’s book. Then the copy came in with this “Ultimate Bathroom Book” kicker that threw me of immediately on the first round. I guess there’s this whole male marketing strategy these days based on Books Made For Easy Reading While Taking A Crap,” which is all fine and dandy but was a total fail considering Feldman’s show has a rather large female audience who aren’t all that warm to the idea of Potty Lit. So luckily they dropped that nonsense and on the bottom two the evolution starts that leads to the final cover.
One of the few books I’ve done for DaCapo after working in office for Avalon for a short spell while living in NYC, and before the publisher was bought out and most of the staff made redundant. There were some earlier ideas I seem to have lost, and most of the process was trying out a billion or so images I’m not going to bore anybody with here. The one idea that remained I still find interesting was the copy-heavy faux wedding invite I designed and wrote all the text for. I do that quite a bit actually, write text for book covers I think should be on them. Occasionally something I come up with will stick.
This one for Source Books was a meant to be a sister cover to Take The Mic.
Shameless Art Chantry rip-off.
These were the very first round of anything I did for author Ruth Harris, one of my very first eBook clients along with her Husband Michael. There were considerations with the legibility of the way eBooks covers are viewed that I hadn’t anticipated, which made most of these except for the bottom right one illegible at the microscopic thumbnails size one sees these most of the time.
In spite of how the final version how much I liked the final version of this book (seen on my website), I always thought any of these numerous comps could have been excellent contenders. I’m extremely proud of the work I did on this book. Definitely a high point in my design.
Final eBook cover for Michael Harris’s reissued Always on Sunday.
Michael had the unique concept of running the title of the book as
a smaller subset of text towards the bottom of the image, choosing
to focus on the keywords of the entertainers. As opposed to paper
books where one can pick up and hold then in your hands to digest
all the cover information full scale, eBooks (which are frequently
viewed as thumbnails) are incredibly dependent on the scale of type
to attract attention. Michael’s solution presents a new idea I’ve been
pondering in relation to eBook covers, where the covers are more
like movie posters with taglines to attract attention at a glance,
the big draw here for fans of The Beatles, etc, who can see right
away the content of the book might appeal to them. Versions of
this cover follow below.
These were the first versions for Michael’s book before his idea of switching the order of the text for the cover.
Punch-line covers are tricky, you get about two seconds to get a laugh, so nothing too cerebral or the average reader just gives a glazed response. The final version of this humorous title for Source Books I sent off to press is on the left, yet changed considerably in house when I saw the printed version (minus the X-treatment on the eyes among other things). I prefer the way I sent it. The middle version, which I also dig, was based on the lurid headline treatment you’d see on the front page of NYC tabloid The Sun, rechristened The Blob in my world.
