Cover Design

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by jaxx6166

not a cover but im proud of it just the same. its a teaser image i made for my new wip. i hope to make a keynote/powerpoint movie/trailer based on this

You know what's great as well, with every new cover you do, the better it gets, the more fun it becomes. I really look forward to making covers now and sometimes just having fun gets you to interesting places - like how I ended up doing the covers for the Smashwords Marketing and Style Guide. All creativity is good, I just wish more people would have the same level of fun you seem to be having with this, instead of treating it like a business all the time (that really gets me down).

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by Dusty Bottoms

You know what's great as well, with every new cover you do, the better it gets, the more fun it becomes. I really look forward to making covers now and sometimes just having fun gets you to interesting places - like how I ended up doing the covers for the Smashwords Marketing and Style Guide. All creativity is good, I just wish more people would have the same level of fun you seem to be having with this, instead of treating it like a business all the time (that really gets me down).

Alright, you inspired me to show off a bit in the name of having had fun... this is a cover I helped the author design because I was bored at work one day -

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by nomesque

Alright, you inspired me to show off a bit in the name of having had fun... this is a cover I helped the author design because I was bored at work one day -

See, it's all fun

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by Dusty Bottoms

See, it's all fun

Oh yeah... especially when you're allowed to use any colours you like! I do some minor graphic design at work, but the allowed palette is ... depressing, at times. So occasionally I do some designs for no reason but gratification

I like watching the stuff you two are coming up with.

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by nomesque

Oh yeah... especially when you're allowed to use any colours you like! I do some minor graphic design at work, but the allowed palette is ... depressing, at times. So occasionally I do some designs for no reason but gratification

I like watching the stuff you two are coming up with.

I'm a big fan of reduced colour palettes myself, like the illustrations that used to be around from the 60's and 70's. I've been looking into ways to put that into use in a spy series I'm working on that's set in the 60's (it's all Pulp all the time at Fictionmonster from now on). If I could actually draw I think I'd probably get some training in all this and do it more often (I have a design background, but in theatre and film, where drawing wasn't that important).

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by Dusty Bottoms

I'm a big fan of reduced colour palettes myself, like the illustrations that used to be around from the 60's and 70's. I've been looking into ways to put that into use in a spy series I'm working on that's set in the 60's (it's all Pulp all the time at Fictionmonster from now on). If I could actually draw I think I'd probably get some training in all this and do it more often (I have a design background, but in theatre and film, where drawing wasn't that important).

Black, white, one shade of blue-ish grey, bright orange, bright cyan, a blue close to royal blue. And flowcharts. This is why I write fiction

[Dusty Bottoms]

Some more logos (the skull was ditched after some more thought).

Although i was partial to this 'Mod' skull I made

[dreams]

Originally Posted by Dusty Bottoms

Some more logos (the skull was ditched after some more thought).

These I like. It instantly makes me think Pulp.

Originally Posted by jaxx6166

I gave up on making things complicated. Here's V3. Simple. Plain. Done. I've hacked apart the square ends. So now it's just a perfect circle in the middle of the sea..
The blue lines were a border I accidentally created. It's gone now +)

jaxx, for some reason the colors on this are not as appealing to me as your other color combinations. I like this one: Is the wip be a continuation of the first book?

Nice job, nomesque. It's always fun to take a break from work (at work ) ..

[zelda_pinwheel]

i love this thread. you're so right that it's all about having fun ! i've never managed to do anything decent when it felt like work. that new fictionmonster logo is great, i love the fedora ! nomesque, thanks for posting yours !

jaxx, plenty of great advice here, but one of the most important things to keep in mind is the suggestion to look at the cover really small and see how it works. another tip, while you're working, is to walk away and look at the design from a distance from time to time. it seems silly but it really does help to see if something is coming to together, or where the problems are.

[Dusty Bottoms]

More fun stuff Playing about with t-shirt designs, and the logos on them, and I don't know which I prefer. I'm sort of leaning toward 'Bone Martin on the left.

[zelda_pinwheel]

ooooh, tough decision. hard to say. although the one with just the fedora leaves more to the imagination, and might be the more effective image as a result. (plus it reminds me of the invisible man a little bit.)

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

ooooh, tough decision. hard to say. although the one with just the fedora leaves more to the imagination, and might be the more effective image as a result. (plus it reminds me of the invisible man a little bit.)

I like 'Bone' Martin, but then again the 'ghost' owner of Fictionmonster will simply be known as 'The Man in the White Fedora', so they both fit... Damn, decisions, decisions. And I still haven't made up my wind whether to go with Textpattern or Wordpress for the site.

[zelda_pinwheel]

i like them both too, i'm glad i'm not the one who has to decide.

as for the site... wordpress is good, but i don't know anything about textpattern so i really can't say much there either. aren't you glad i'm being so helpful ?

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

i like them both too, i'm glad i'm not the one who has to decide.

as for the site... wordpress is good, but i don't know anything about textpattern so i really can't say much there either. aren't you glad i'm being so helpful ?

Very very very helpful From my experiments Textpattern is far more CSS based and fluid because of it, there's not so much of that 'loop' that happens in Wordpress. There'll be no blogs, because none of us read them and we'd rather be writing stories than posts. Either which way we'll be using Textpattern or Wordpress like a CMS for the site. Now, all I have to do is finalise the starting lineup and make the big decision on whether to go with Smashwords or not. Every day there are new decisions to make

[zelda_pinwheel]

well, you know (or maybe you don't) how much i love css. so that's a point in favour of textpattern, especially if you just want a cms. one of the good things about wordpress is all the various widgets and plug-ins and such available for it, for managing spam and comments and creating a tag cloud and all that business. oh, and the fact that there are templates agogo available, but i doubt you'll need one of those. if textpattern has a decent cms interface and you don't want a blog wordpress might be overkill.