Book Cover Project

I am not a graphic designer so maybe my comments should be taken with a pinch of salt. Still if it's feedback you want....

There is too much going on in the image and that's even without the text being added. Best to work the two together rather than include text as afterthought - the point has already been made.

I'm not sure what has happened in post processing, but the outcome has the overdone HDR effect, especially in the foreground and clouds.

Duplicating the ghost characters does not work, I would tend to have just one version of each and to handle the transparency with great subtlety - they might only be visible on close inspection.

The relationship between central character and ghosts is critical - I wonder if they should all be looking directly at him. If the image had other people in the frame who were clearly unaware of the ghosts presence the central issue of the narrative would be even more self evident - but it might become too busy. In Sixth Sense (?), ghosts were always looking at the boy (the only person who could see them).

Is there significance to the building far left - it looks like a municipal toilet block, but the context of garden or park land works well.

I am sure there is significance in torn trousers and hair over the face, but if not maybe it's not the best portrait of the central character. What is he looking at what is the expression on his face.

These comments apart, I do like a lot about the image - black and white is better by far, and it is good that it is an everyday scene (rather than the clichéd cemetery)

Pass the salt

This thread confirms my 40-year experience as a publisher: that although there are some 'rules' to follow, getting all interested parties to agree on a design can be challenging! By the way, don't diss the cliché. The first two duties of a cover are to 1) make the reader want to pick up the book, 2) reveal its nature. Clichés can have a role in the second.

As has been mentioned, it needs to be looked at as 3 photographs, with priority being the front cover. May help if you show the splits, maybe with some dotted lines, so you can be sure what will be on the front.

I'd want to be completely sure all of the face of the dominant ghost will fall on the front cover.

Hello there; I am the daughter in question! Yes, I made an account specifically to write this...

Firstly I would like to talk about the text I plan to put on the cover - I have a very clear idea of how I will do the blurb on the back cover, by using a box with faded opacity so that the image is still visible through it but the text does not get lost. And I feel (without having actually tested it) that if the writing is in black on the front it doesn't risk getting lost in any way either.

Secondly - I didn't want to shoot in a graveyard because the feel of the book is more... social? than that. E.g. not all ghosts hang out in a graveyard; mostly they stay in places they feel comfortable, and my character meets most of them in the local high street.

Thirdly - although I like the black and white version I don't feel like if it were a real book in a real book store a black and white cover would stand out. I can only think of one book with a black and white cover, out of all the books I can think of (which is a lot), which is a book called Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (I think?). As well as this I feel you have to stain to see the ghosts in the black and white version a little more, and I want them to be more prominent.

Fourthly, and this will be the long one.... No offense meant, but I have so many things wrong with what you've said,ronniemac. I composed the image with text in mind - see above section about text. The clouds and trees look overdone because it was long exposure on a very windy day, as my dad said. It wasn't ideal, and when we did the test shot it was a perfect, still day, but there wasn't much we could do as both my dad and my main model needed to have the day off work to do this so we had to go with what we were given. The reason there is duplicates of the ghost characters is because of the long exposure. That's how we got them to be transparent; couldn't do one without the other. My college tutor fully supported the idea, so I went with it. Also, I have had enough people in my college group mention Sixth Sense to me over the last month... Which is possibly why this is aggravating me so much, so please don't take personal offense, but I want to replicate that film as little as possible so I didn't want to have all the ghosts looking at my central character so blatantly. And there is significance to the torn trousers and the hair on the main model - he's my best friend, that's how he looks, and he's who my main character is based off so that's how my main character looks.

As I said before - please don't take any of this horribly, I am simply explaining all my own ideas, reasons, etc.

Thanks to everyone for giving input - this can all go in my college sketchbook work when I waffle on about everything I did to create the final product ^_^

Haha welcome to Pentax User Daughter dearest!

I think the idea of inviting C&C on a forum like this is to take away much of the personal perspective to see how people take the image on board without knowing all the inner workings, I deliberately gave some but not all info about the process and the day.

Actually some interesting points made by Ronniemac, if the final crop can avoid using the building that would be good, people will think of Sixth sense no matter how hard you want them not to etc

Also that someone who works in graphic design likes it a lot is really pleasing, thanks Glowingblue.

John Riley hangs out with Goths, of course he wanted the shot in a graveyard!! cliché alert

I will try to post up some indication of the final cut with guidlines as to where the spine will be but first Hugbubble needs to finish the text so we know how wide the spine will be

Kind regards

Pete A

Thank goodness I included option 3. It's looking very attractive right now hehe

HugBubble, good to 'meet' you in person. You'll have an interesting cover by the end of the process and will discover for yourself what works and what doesn't. You may find that having the title in black will not separate it sufficiently from the photograph. You need to pull away a bit from the existing colours -- something in the yellow spectrum or perhaps the red, eg, would achieve that. If you drop the opacity far enough on the back panel and use a strong typeface, your idea for the blurb should work. If you do find typeface and image fighting with one another, you could always replace the image in the panel with a colour, either solid or tint.

Good luck with the project.

I think that this is one of this images - what I mean is had you presented it as an just an image I would think 'why bother', however, for the purpose and the 'brief' so to speak I really do believe that it is fantastic

My thought in this, given what it is for would be to apply some selective colour popping and boost the contrast to unrealistic levels to enhance the 'brief'

I do have a history of being wrong though

I really like the image and I think it would work very well as a wrap around book cover. That's all I have to say!

Regards
David

'Also that someone who works in graphic design likes it a lot is really pleasing, thanks Glowingblue.'

My opinions vindicated, I will sleep easy - goodnight folks

Do ghosts have shadows? If not, then perhaps the shadow next to the female ghost with glasses could be masked out.

I think only Peter Pan went around (for a while) without a shadow. All the ghosts I've seen had theirs attached.