The Muse: Cover Design

I used to be a great artist. Not in the sense of being great, no way, but in the sense that I loved it and used to doodle all the time - in my schoolbooks, when I was supposed to be writing essays or doing sums or whatever, I peopled the margins of my pages with fanciful images and also spent a good deal of time putting paintbrush to paper. That has carried over to graphic design and photography, and hopefully my results will continue to improve.

Anyway. Once it was settled that I was going to publish Fred's book, we began to cast about for a suitable cover idea. I wanted something striking and unique, and for that purpose a black background is always pretty good.

I messed around until I had a suitably spooky glowy text and spirally thing which I somehow got out of one of the effects in my ten year old graphics program. Yep, 10 years old and counting, and it still does everything I want it to.

Next I really wanted a picture of Stan, the main character. But who could it be? The answer turned out to be quite close to home, as I ended up photographing none other than my own brother when he came to town for a visit. My housemate at that time happens to own a wonderful fantasy sword, and things just came together after that. Over there you see one pic of many taken during that photo shoot. I was up on the veranda with the camera, and Andrew was down on the driveway so I could get that oblique angle. The black sheet was an aid to later pasting "Stan" onto my mostly black background.

All this of course in consultation with Fred. It's his book and he ought to like the cover, right? :)


Here's the final result a little larger:

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