Making of.
After discussing some initial ideas with Lesley and showing her some early concepts, we landed on the idea of a modern take on the bold, limited colour palette travel posters from yesteryear, with the newly arrived protagonist overlooking the rolling landscape of Borth. After sketching out the initial outline of the overall design and trying a few different looks for the character, taking into mind her young age and attire for the time period, I then started to build up and flesh out the design, making few minor detail tweaks along the way to try to match the landscape to that of Borth in the early 1900s, and finished the design off with the handwritten title.
Paperback cover.
With the cover artwork being a landscape, I knew at the start of the project that a good choice for the paperback cover would be for a continuation of that artwork onto the reverse of the book. With the back cover including all kinds of important information such as the blurb, website address, publishing information & logo, as well as the all important ISBN barcode, I wanted to keep the design fairly uncluttered while also continuing the story from the front cover with the departing ship setting off on its return journey across the Atlantic ocean.
Mockups.
Lesley wanted some digital mockups for use in promotional material and to give a visual for the soon-to-be-printed book. I created a few variants for her to use that would give her a range to choose from depending on the context and platform.
Self-publishing logo.
Lesley wanted an original self-publishing logo for her to use with this book and any future titles. Knowing that the logo mark especially would be used at various sizes such as on the spine of the paperback it had to be easily readable even at smaller sizes, so after a few initial ideas I created a minimalist cuckoo design enclosed within a circle to represent a nest. I made sure that the logo mark especially could be recoloured to fit with any future colour schemes it may need to while always retaining the gold star element of the design for recognisability.
'I can't recommend Andrew highly enough. The cover is everything I wanted and more.'
Lesley Jones, author of 'Mary Eleanor'
