book cover design 2
The Chronicles of Siala
Reference project & book series of cover designs -a case study
This book series turned out to be a bestseller, so this case study can start with the question: “how to design a bestseller?”
I recall the briefing for this project didn´t sound that challenging, especially for the first cover. The call was to do a painting based on a reference image the agency had acquired from another artist, whose work is more into 3d modelling. My task was to create a more painterly and realistic image that looks just cool.
The following imagery describes very good the process of how the image developed from sketch to final work. The typography was done completely by agency Guter Punkt, the reference work for book one was acquired from Lady Night Vamp, published by Piper.
There was not much difference between the first and the second one, except that for book two the briefing was not strict and so I had a little room to come up with a convincing sketch. The only thing that is similar in all 3 covers is the hood and the hilt.
The coloring had to be bold and should be covering the whole book. From a typographical point of view this is a difficult task as the coloring of the font is exposed to a simultaneous contrast.
In all three books I have made reference shots from myself for poses to develop a realistic pose, the hands in book 2 and 3 stand out and give these covers something special, while book one was too planned and would probably look better without glove too.
The third book allowed me also some freedom in pose and coloring, the only important direction was to keep the close-up aspect in mind to have the portraits in a similar size when viewing the books side-by-side, exactly like you can see below.
I´m very happy how these turned out, it was printed on heavy paper, 5 -sided and printed on all (!)sides, including an embossed and glossy finished font face on the front cover.
More informations about publisher and the book is available here: www.piper.de
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