To say I went on a rollercoaster with the cover of this book is an understatement. I have several Canva projects in a GvM folder. The last of which has sixty-eight designs on it. (Now, some of those are similar designs – copied and changed a bit here or there. Maybe a new font. Maybe a different color.) I just couldn’t seem to find something that…stuck.
I had gone through a number of designs before landing on this one. I liked the colors (for the most part – I loved the red brick but could never get the title quite right). I loved the brick as the background, but I couldn’t find the right one for the full cover (this was a portrait-oriented photo, and I didn’t care for the enlarged brick when spread over the full cover). I landed on this as a place holder for the website, but I continued to fiddle with it.
Eventually, I started trying wildly different designs to try and break out of the cycle of small shifts and the irritation that resulted when I couldn’t get it just right. I spent a lot of time on Unsplash – a wealth of searchable photos. I tried all sorts of things, all sorts of images. But still – nothing clicked. Nothing made me utter – “That’s it!” It all seemed too much. Too complicated. (I even went down a rabbit hole of Pascal Campion pieces – and I found one that made a lovely cover…but the vibe didn’t fit the story.)
So I decided to simplify it.
Through most of this process (spanning…months? a year?), I had an idea that stuck around in the back of my head that I knew I couldn’t create in Canva (but if I still had access to my old Creative Suite software, I could…). So I just kept trying other things.
Cut to: Me realizing I COULD actually (sorta) do what I had wanted in Canva! \^o^/
Canva has a series of ‘frames’ in all different shapes that you can insert photos into – including variations of letters. BINGO! I had envisioned the title cut from a photograph of fire and lightning to represent their individual powers. And I could use frames in the shapes of letters and insert photos into them.
I sent a mockup of the cover to my writing bestie, and he had the brilliant idea of putting it on a slant – and voila! I give you the cover of Goode vs Melville. (❁´◡`❁)
Ami Maxine 