I designed this cover for a student at my alma mater. I offer discounts to professional writing seniors who need to compile all their work into a printed book for their capstone project (yes, I help them with their homework…legally). It’s been really enjoyable to do these, and I have a few more upcoming for this semester. I often do the interior designs for these as well, so they’re fun creative side projects that break up my standard workload.
I got an interesting job request to update a nonfiction biography about Peter Hunt, a white slave from Mississippi in the 1800s. The author is a descendant and has done a ton of research that earned her a position of finalist at the Indie Book Awards. You can order the book on Amazon.
The challenge was getting a high resolution image of Peter Hunt, since the image we had to work with was only 2 inches tall and wouldn’t print at a full bleed like we wanted. I ended up running it through an AI-powered photo enhancer to upscale and sharpen some of the details that were lost. Although not a perfect restoration by any means, it gave us a place to start with.
The author also wanted to keep the words from the original cover (see below) because they spoke to important elements within the book, as well as continue to use the color red in the design. I figured that I could keep the hallmarks of her original design while updating it to appeal to most readers.
To do that, I switched to a more historical handwritten font and scattered her words into the background so it was almost a pattern, pulling certain words forward and interacting with Peter Hunt’s headshot. To incorporate the red, I pulled important words like “freedom” forward and colored them to stand against the others, creating more interest.
Ultimately, the author was extremely happy with the final design, and we even received an Indie Book finalist award for the cover design, in addition to her previous award.
Below you can see the original cover beside with the updated one.
I’ve got a big project breakdown for you today. This was a super fun cover that had a lot of cool pieces that came with it.
This actually was a dream come true in some ways. In grad school, I did a whole series deliberately focusing on what Red Riding Hood would look like as different genres, so when Jennifer emailed me and asked if I would be willing to do a real Red Riding Hood retelling, (which could can purchase on her website and Amazon) I was stoked. I bought myself a new font and CGI bushes for this one (I was tired of cutting out unimpressive bush photos from stock websites).
This also happens to be the first book where I pull a classic Kirk DouPonce and feature myself on my own cover (my friend didn’t want to pose for me). And if you had told twelve-year-old Jenneth that she was going to grow up and be a model, she would have laughed you right out of the room.
I also was able to do a quick design for Jennifer’s publishing name, En Pointe Press, which we added to the back. En Pointe is a reference to ballet, while also meaning “on point” so the swoosh at the end of the publisher’s name reflects both a ballet foot, and a point.
I got a fun batch of fun speculative fiction covers recently, and this was no exception. Coincidently, I met the author over a local writer’s Zoom call in the middle of the pandemic, then met her in person at the annual Realm Makers conference in St. Louis. For her upcoming collection of short stories, she asked if I would design the cover, which I eagerly jumped at.
This cover was unique in that the author decided to print it through Minibük, which is a (Swedish?) company that prints tiny volumes that are only a few inches tall and easy to pass out as table favors at book conventions. The featured stories are connected to her larger story world, so it was a good way to introduce people to some of her characters and lore.
I bought myself a new font (as usual, because I have no self control) and hunted for stock photography that could depict a main scene from one of her stories. (There’s dragons in it, so how can I not play with fire??)
I had the pleasure of illustrating the cover for “The Graveyard Shift,” a one-episode radio drama from Katie Haughton and her audiobook podcast, Katiez Korner, with talent from Makayla Sanchez.
Here’s a little bit about the episode:
When Marty, a jaded maid at a rundown motel, gets stuck in the rain with a young coworker, she resigns herself to a late evening of unwanted optimism, unrealistic dreams, and cheap watercolor paints. But when the conversation shifts to more serious matters, Marty realizes she might have misjudged her quirky work partner.
I had a new challenge recently, and for once, it didn’t involve designing a book cover (that was handled by the talented 100 Covers team, whose work you can see below). Instead, I was tasked with creating the interior design for a full-length novel and reflowable ebook—and to match it with its previous book in the soon-to-be trilogy.
© House of El Music
When Ben Wolf asked me to design a cover for a spin-off novella of his Santa Saves Christmas series (in which Santa fights zombie reindeer, raptors, and possibly Cthulhu) I jumped on the opportunity. I’ve been trying to diversify my cover portfolio, and my fiction was lacking—plus, it’s Ben Wolf’s Christmas series. There’s a puffin. There’s fighting Putin. There’s insanity.
Plus I got to build Chernobyl for the cover.
The biggest challenge was making the cover match in style and color to the renowned Kirk DouPonce, who designed the Santa trilogy and is a far more experienced designer than I am. My first attempt had all the right elements, but when Ben pushed me to really pop the colors into an almost comic-book level of saturation, the project really turned into something cool.
This was a speed design I did for a local Pensacola author. She needed an immediate and simple cover for her ebook and specifically asked the type to be “fancy.” I just bought myself a coveted and extremely executive typeface for a BARGAIN STEAL and was desperate to try it out. (This was, of course, before they slapped it up on Adobe Fonts for us users to take advantage of for free…I’m trying not to be too bitter about that.) It’s a gorgeous font with a gazillion alternates—and it happens to be the same font as Stephanie Garber’s Caraval series, just as a fun fact.
Even though the design job was extremely quick, I’m overall satisfied with how it turned out. You can get ahold of a copy on Amazon.
Shortly after finishing college, I joined the team at Havok Publishing as a senior graphic designer. Havok is a source of daily flash fiction covering a range of genres, from mystery to science fiction to comedy to thriller to fantasy. Each story is told in 1,000 words or fewer, and every one of them fits within a season’s theme. It’s a fantastic place to submit fiction and gain writing credentials—and even if your story isn’t accepted, the editorial team gives thorough feedback that can help you improve your writing.
While working with other designers on what we call “story covers” for published flash fiction, I was given the opportunity to joint-design season six’s anthology cover, Casting Call, with Teddi Deppner, who leads Marketing.
The initial concept and composition was mine, and Teddi swapped out a few images for higher quality ones. She also reworked the phoenix silhouette I had to make it more unique from some of the other branding of that season. I worked on the lighting (including the spotlight beams, sparkles, lens flares, feather shadows, and textures on the clapboard), and Teddi did the typography.
You can see our collaborative efforts below our final version.
I was able to design Grace Ingles’s senior portfolio project for her professional writing degree. I loved being able to do illustrations this semester, and had fun laying out the interior designs for this book in particular. I was able to play off of the design and color scheme of The Girl Who Drank The Moon, and use a similar typography as the Lunar Chronicles, which I really enjoyed. It was also fun to create a small little world for the girl featured on the front—Grace’s themes involve a lot of pushing forward and overcoming trials to reach among the stars, so I wanted to create a little place the girl could escape to over the chaos of a busy city and home life. I like to imagine that’s her house with the skylight, just below the cliff (visible in the full artwork below the cover), and that she likes to sneak out at night and watch the skies.
