It’s really cool to discover I’m wrong. Okay, not all the time. Being wrong always feels great, feels exactly like being right and knowing it, up until the moment that reality whaps you upside the head. Finding out you’re wrong often feels terrible… unless you’re not emotionally invested in being right. Then it’s really cool and exciting!
That’s where I’m at on cover art.
When Kindle became a thing, I noted that traditional covers, especially the fantasy ones that looked like oil paintings with cast of thousands, translated terribly to thumbnail. I thought the answer was to simplify: make a central image, and make it clear at thumbnail. Make the text readable at thumbnail.
Except that wasn’t the whole story. Because some covers looked much better for having background details, and sometimes it just felt right to stick the too-small-to-read blurb in the cover, as it really balanced the image. The covers that went to the one-single-item-on-black-background felt too simplified. So, I’m wrong – the answer isn’t just to simplify until it looks good at thumbnail. But what’s the rest of the story?
In a conversation earlier this week, Cedar put it most excellently:
“You can still have complex cover art. What you can’t have is muddy composition, and you have to have sufficient contrast for it to stand out at a thumbnail. If you don’t have sufficient contrast, it all fades into whatever the predominant color of the art is.”
How do you do that?
Here are a couple posts by Dan Dos Santos to check out:
If your first reaction to seeing those links was “I’m not an artist” or “I’m terrible at art”, I strongly encourage you to read them. Because it’s not about being good at making art, it’s about being a good publisher and understanding what your cover artist is doing well enough to give clear direction.
Mad Genius Club 
8 responses to “A New Take On Cover Art”
Yes I will nerd out on this even though I have written one entire story because I love drawing and painting. I have a portfolio even. (In my closet)
This is really nice. Thanks, Dorothy. ~:D
Thanks for the links! It’s good to find a common language for “I like the design but something’s not quite working.”
Fantastic!
Cover art trends are changing all the time, but the basics of art are still there. The basics that you need to attract a viewers eye and cause them to linger.
Composition is number one, because of the psychology around it.
Contrast is number two, because it feeds back into number one. You can have a totally B/W picture and still have a great image because of contrast and composition.
Color is third, because it also has a lot of psychological signaling with it (which can change depending on your culture and where you are in the world!)
And if you are designing covers for other countries such as Japan, where the reading order is reversed, then your design composition has to be reversed, too, or it won’t tick the same boxes for those viewers.
Remember that your title and byline are part of the art. The artwork can point at them, or they can point at artwork, or both. Plus the color effects apply there, too.
Excellent! Bookmarked the man’s site.
I noticed that the emotional vibe of the different arrangements was not the same. For the temperature and value examples, especially in the second half, there were some startling differences in my reaction.
Thank you, will take a closer look when I get home – his example images are not showing up on this device for some reason.