I had the privilege to design the cover for Jenny Smith’s new memoir, Live the Impossible, a book about her time in a wheelchair and how it’s made her into who she is today.
Cover and Layout Design for “A Writer’s Wilderness”
Ever want to read a western…but with dragons? Kylee Kosoff just graduated with her degree in professional writing and published an anthology of her work (and yes, there be dragons in the west).
Cover Design for Ben Wolf’s “Power Author”
I designed this cover for Ben Wolf, author of Ghost Mine and the Blood Mercenaries series. This was my first time designing a nonfiction work, so my style had to adapt to accommodate for it. Instead of creating a scene or relying on a cinematic design, I wanted “writing book” to be the first message a potential buyer would get. That called for a light cover and the word “author” as big as I could get it. Ben also asked if I would include a book that had both science fiction and fantasy elements emerging from its pages. I took color inspiration from Save the Cat!, one of the most notable writing books for fiction writers on the market. It features a bold orange that goes against cliché color pallets for writing books (like red and black). Instead of orange, I picked an equally-striking yellow, which led to the play off of “power” as gears, machines, and electricity. You can purchase Power Author on Amazon.
End-Semester Book Cover Redesigns
This is the second half of my semester redesigns. For our Conceptual Communications class we had to create weekly artwork based on a prompt. I decided to redesign well-known book covers based on each. Below are each of the three covers with their original photo references that I used to combine into a single image. One of my goals for these projects is to create a professional book cover using entirely free resources from Pixabay, Dafont, and other online sites (with the obvious exception of Adobe, which sadly isn’t free). Below you can see each photo I used in each cover, and you can find every resource free online.
Mockup Cover Designs for RED Trilogy
Eighteen-year-old River Ardis lives in a future where terrorists infiltrate the country as teenagers. She tries her best to keep her head down and away from the unrest until she meets a distraught girl from the 1990s. But little do either of them know, the oppressive government has been hunting the time traveler for years—and anyone associated with her. I began writing my time travel dystopian trilogy when I was fourteen, and it’s since undergone extensive edits for the past ten years. While I intend to pursue a traditional publishing house, which would be responsible for cover designs, I wanted to design my own cover and layout for a class project.
The Genres of Red Riding Hood
For my graduate Conceptual Communication class, I had to do a project that would depict the idea of “compare and contrast.” I decided to do a genre study and create a set of book covers that showed the classic story of Red Riding Hood in six of the biggest genres on the market.
Mid-Semester Book Cover Redesigns
For our Conceptual Communications class we had to create weekly artwork based on a prompt. I decided to redesign well-known book covers based on each. Below are each of the three covers with their original photo references that I used to combine into a single image. One of my goals for these projects is to create a professional book cover using entirely free resources from Pixabay, Dafont, and other online sites (with the obvious exception of Adobe, which sadly isn’t free). Below you can see each photo I used in each cover, and you can find every resource free online.
The Book of Esther Redesign with Commentary
For class we were tasked with redesigning a short book of the Bible. One of our options was Esther, and even though I wasn’t particularly a fan of that story, I knew there was a lot of interesting history there. I decided to not only redesign the book like the class required, but I also wanted to make it a historical and biblical commentary. My dad and I worked together to sift through the historical references–Dad came up with a timeline based off of James Ussher’s Annals of History while I read Josephus. Below is the cover jacket design and some of the spreads in the book. I’ve also included the introduction to read below the designs, in case you want to know more about what went into the in-depth project. If you’d like to purchase the book, you can find it here. I got an A- on this project.
Book Design for “Beautifully Broken”
I recently did the cover and interior design for Celeste R. Warner’s book, Beautifully Broken. It was one of those crazy hectic, last minute emergency projects, so there were several sleepless nights and plenty of euphoria afterward when it was delivered to a very happy client. This project was a ton of fun, and you can purchase Celeste’s book here for only $5.57! Here’s the cover I was able to design.
Book and Design for “Timelines”
As a professional writing major at my college, seniors have to compile their best work from over the last four years into a bound, designed book. It’s been a project I’ve been waiting for with bated breath ever since I learned about it. Older students told me as a sophomore to save every paper I ever wrote, keep teachers’ notes, and to be thinking about a theme that can tie everything together. Back then, I couldn’t imagine picking out a theme that could encompass all my writing: after all, I liked to write about different things, and some of my stories were vastly different from others. But as my senior year came upon me, I found the perfect theme. My stories revolve around either hope or memory. Many of them look to the future with either a warning to society about our faults, or an expected adventure just out of reach. And when not writing a social commentary on America’s morals, I’m pulling nostalgia from the cracks of my mind. I thought “memory” and “hope” were much too generic for my theme, but finally it hit me: I also write about time. Time looking forward to the future or back … Read More