Project Redstar and Geppi Museum

Just wanted to share what is currently on my desk. Here is a book cover for Project Redstar, a variant cover for Pinesport Divide by Charles Matthews.

I played around quite a bit with creating

patterns on the background. I got my inspiration from a ceramic and carbon fiber wedding band which you can see here. The picture of the wedding band really doesn't do it justice but if you look at it in a store, it have a really cool 3D effect.

I kept playing around with different sizes and I finally settled down with this size. I probably could have gone a little bigger for the individual blocks but I was concerned about legibility.

To create the background, I made a block of 12x12 pixels in Adobe Photoshop and then divided it in half. I then utilized the gradient tool to create a gradient black to white from top to bottom. On the other half of the block, I pulled the gradient in the opposite direction. I then saved it as a pattern. I created a fill layer in my book cover file and selected my custom pattern to create the effect. Creating another layer, I pulled two gradients from the sides to give it more of a three dimensional look.

This blog is not intended as a step by step instructional but if you have any questions about a specific technique, please do not hesitate to send me a note.

I recently had an opportunity to take a few days off and go visit some of the local museums in the area. One of the benefits of living in Maryland is the wide variety of incredible art museums in Washington DC and Baltimore. My older sons wanted to go see the Freer Gallery of Art and the Hirshhorn Gallery, both part of the Smithsonian collection of museums in the National Mall in Washington DC. At the Hirshhorn, I was very impressed with the body of work by Yves Klein.

In Baltimore, fans of comics books, strips and popular culture should visit the Geppi Museum. Conveniently located at Camden Yards, this is a great museum for all ages and recently was nominated for the Nickelodeon Parents Pick Award for best museum. Not only does it have a fantastic collection of original artwork and comics, but chances are you will get a chance to see some of the toys you grew up with no matter what age you are. My five year old son was a big fan of the toys and metal lunchboxes. We had a great time and look forward to going back.

Pinesport Divide Book Cover

Thought I would share my process for creating the book cover design for the new book coming out called Pinesport Divide by Charles Matthews (Metal Lunchbox Publishing). It is a young adult book about a young boy dealing with conflicting emotions of loyalty to his best friend and his romantic feelings towards his best friend's girl. When it becomes evident that his best friend is involved in a dangerous new program that physically enhances human beings and threatens to embroil the world in a new civil war, he is forced to make a painful decision in an attempt to save lives and avert a war.

The first step in this process was to come up with a logo for the book. As usual, many different versions of the logo. Most ended up in the trash as first drafts often do but I eventually narrowed it down to a few versions for my client to choose from. At the presentation of the rough drafts, the client liked one design in particular which I developed. Since this was set in part at a high school and there are some critical scenes involving sports, I went for a varsity look.



Next came the development of the cover. Initially, the direction was to do an illustration of the title character as the cover. He was to be a little battered (he goes through some abuse in the book) and one of his eyes glows in the dark. I like to put together a few different options for the client so I presented three versions of the book cover.



The illustration was completed entirely in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet. Part of the problem with this illustration is the glowing eye reveals a fairly major plot point in the story.



This version was more of a graphic design/typography approach to the assignment. I like the way that it looks a little bit like a journal from a distance.



I had some concerns about the legibility of the original logo design especially when shrunken down to the thumbnail preview size you see on websites such as Amazon and this version improves it. The little guy at the bottom was inspired in part by the highly stylized animated credit sequence at the end of The Incredibles (which I just introduced to my two youngest boys).

These were the three designs presented to the client. The client liked the third version the best but did not care for the highly stylized little dude at the bottom and wanted a more realistic representation of our tormented main character. The other request was to change the size of the "S" in Pinesport so people would not mistake it for Pine Sport. The final version of the book cover is below.



In case you wanted to watch me create this final version and had some time on your hands, below is a video screen capture of my desktop. The book should be published soon and I will leave an update with all the details. Comments are always welcome.

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