Collection cover design assistance

[Rechan]

This topic comes up enough. I think we should have a thread dedicated to talking about covers in general, advice and resources for cover design depending on if it’s a novel, an anthology, etc. That would be great for a general topic to help everybody.

This thread tho is specifically for the collection I’m putting together and I don’t know what to put on the cover. The book is Intimate Little Secrets, and the theme is stories that are all relating to intimate relationships. The key here being not just sexual, but emphasizing varying relationships, the slice of life and the intimacy of the characters.

I don’t think that there are any specific scenes that convey this theme at a glance. More importantly I don’t want the reader to go “Oh, it’s a book about these two characters” or “the context of this situation”, when it’s about multiple characters. But having multiple characters on the cover is costly and I don’t know how I would convey that message on the cover with just ‘here’s some characters’ either.

Or am I really overthinking it?

[Bahumat]

Always start here: http://bookcoverarchive.com/

It’s a curated collection of well-designed book covers, as curated by professionals in the industry.

Speaking to the thread of theme requires identifying it and symbolizing it appropriately. For an anthology, the problem is encompassing that theme within multiple stories and the cover.

Begin with solid design fundamentals: Make the title of the anthology easy to read and clear. Avoid stylized fonts for titles. You’ll notice that almost none of the titles shows in the book archive use serif typeface. For clarity of reading, Sans Serif is what you want.

For a theme of “Intimate Little Secrets”, the first mental image that comes to my mind is a woman whispering into a man’s ear. I’d suggest a diaphanous silhouette in the background, with text framing above and below.

Here’s something I put together in 10 minutes, thinking about it. It wouldn’t pass muster for me, but it gives a good idea of how to work with the symbology, typography, and color choices to communicate things about the book.

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[Fred_Patten]

This is my personal taste, but I’ve always liked covers that illustrate specific scenes, or that seem to, rather than abstract art. I’ve been reading s-f books for over fifty years, and while I’ve liked novels, collections, and anthologies about equally, I’ve usually preferred the covers of novels because they’ve usually shown a scene in the story or the main characters, while the covers of anthologies are often an abstraction or a surrealistic impression of The Future or Technology or Space or whatever. Not always, but usually.

Some exceptions that come to mind are the cover of “Star SF Stories #2”, which illustrated the lead story specifically rather than the whole book; or the second edition of “Sunset of Furmankind” by Ted Blasingame, which looked like a scene from the story but was an allegory showing the two personalities of the protagonist. The artist Richard M. Powers was skilled at painting covers that were very surrealistic but also very symbolic of the book’s plot; his cover for “The Stars My Destination” by Alfred Bester in particular.

Most of my books have been anthologies published by FurPlanet Productions, and I’ve been very happy with the covers that FuzzWolf and Teiran have commissioned for them.

[Munchkin]

I had the same concern you did, Reech. I know that for Fragments we’re keeping it simple and clean. One idea we tossed around was the silhouette of two hands clasped. Another was a collage in the shape of a heart with small vague pictures that hint at the various stories. Indeed, by going more toward symbology to better regency l reflect the emotions you are hoping these stories will give overall, it also winds up being significantly cheaper. Our own costs were cut by at least a third, if not more.

[Chipotle]

I had a discussion with Maggie about cover art not too long ago, and she made the interesting observation that cover design – not just the art, but the font choice and layout – tend to signal genres. Setting aside furry for a moment, you’ll notice that romance books nearly always have depictions of the characters (nearly always gazing into one another’s eyes). Fantasy books often have a scene from the story. Science fiction books tend to have scenes that suggest the story; if the story involves spaceships, it’s going to have a picture of a spaceship or a planet or such. And in terms of typography, science fiction books tend to use bold sans serif typefaces, but fantasy books often tend to use classic serifed fonts (look at the covers for books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, or any of the many editions of The Lord of the Rings). Romance covers tend to go for either serif fonts, like fantasy books, or more cursive fonts. “Literary” novels get to play around with these conventions a lot more, especially in the modern era where the typography itself is likely to be the star of the show. (The genre publisher Tor tends to do its genre covers in ways that bring in that literary focus on typography, but that’s still unusual.)

While you can always break these conventions and go for a blaze of originality, in practice, genre readers tend to look for covers that look like their genre – even if they don’t know they’re consciously doing it. If you have a high fantasy book whose cover makes it look like a lost Arthur C. Clarke novel, you probably have a marketing issue.

So back to furries. We like to see, well, furries! A depiction of a scene from the story is a major signal to the audience: both “this is a book in such-and-such a genre” and “this is a book that involves a story about the furries on the cover.” Honestly, I don’t think abstract art for a novel or anthology that you plan to sell primarily to furries is a good idea; if it’s on a table at a convention and it doesn’t have a furry on the cover, people may be less likely to pick it up when they’re browsing.

[Rechan]

Chipotle, I remember that discussion. What impressed me was her point about how, when a book becomes popular gets reprinted to appeal to broader audiences, covers become more and more abstract and vague… The publisher signalling “This is a really well selling SF/F book” by having nothing even remotely genre-specific on the cover.

Because I can look at a TON of SF covers and they are just… abstract shapes and flat colors (Examples 1, 2, 3).)

I do like Bahumat’s idea. But less silhouette, actually depicting parts of the faces, to, as Chipotle points out, suggest “FURRIES!”

As a side note, I think after I resolve the cover issue for myself, I will convert this thread into “Cover Design in general” advice.