Heya! Been busy working on the formatting of The Balance of Light (which took a lot less time than expected) and the cover layout (which took a lot more time than expected). I still have the back cover/Smashwords site blurb to write…which is going to be a pain in the butt, but it’s gotta be done.
But LO! Check it out:
I already knew this was the picture I wanted and cropping it to size was quite easy; a simple 3:2 ratio (and yes, I may have once again physically used a ruler against my monitor to get it right, as I can’t be arsed to do the math in Ps). The original picture is a LOT brighter and yellower, so I had to use Photoshop to turn down the brightness and pump up the contrast a bit until I achieved that lovely golden color. The header and the author line are in the same placement and font, so no big there.
No, the big pain in the butt was the title.
You’d think four reasonably-sized words in Geo Sans Light would be relatively easy to lay out, yes? Well, the placement was simple enough. All three books have the same general text layout. The issue was the color. Originally my idea was to do the opposite of the cover of A Division of Souls by having a yellow cover with blue text. I posted it to my Twitter and Facebook for some input…
…and everyone said they LOVE the picture…but the title color needs work.
WELP. Chalk this up to another learning experience, File Under: Your Brilliant Ideas May Not Work IRL.
Thankfully an artist friend of mine had suggested to work with the main colors of the picture rather than against it, so after much faffing about with the various hues (including a light green, which didn’t work at all), I thought I’d try something daring: yellow on yellow! Well, more like the light yellow I used on book titles 1 and 2, against dark gold. Add a drop shadow effect just to make sure it pops out a bit more, and call it done.
Glad to say, I think it worked out quite nicely!
Let me know what you think!
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