'Slumber' Book Cover Design

Slumber is a fairy-themed fantasy romance novel. The main story revolves around a teen romance coupled with a fantasy element.

The project team consisted of four individuals: Jess, Ruth, Chloe and myself. Furthermore, the project was sponsored by Working Partners, as they have provided us with the opportunity to work and develop the Slumber manuscript.

Jessica and I had our first meeting with Ness (our leader for the Production and Design module) to discuss cover ideas for the Slumber title. Three cover ideas were established in the meeting, which I later sketched. The first sketch showed a girl running through the gates to display the main character (Appendix I). The second features a van wrapped around in vines, as this would relate to a specific moment in the story (Appendix I). The third idea revolved around a necklace as the central object for the cover, which would indicate a cursed necklace in the plotline (Appendix I). Jessica researched specific imagery online that could be used for the book cover; additionally, she created a mood board to help us navigate what cover style and mood would best convey the book (Appendix J).

Later on, some cover mock-ups were created to begin the process of combining different objects and ideas to visualise what the potential cover could look like (Appendix K). Finally, the team picked the most suitable cover from the cover mock-ups created by me (Appendix L). However, additional editing was implemented as the cover needed to pertain better to the UK market; as explained in a brief meeting with Hazel, the style of initial cover related more to the US market (Appendix L). As a result, the cover brightness and colours were diminished and muted to better appeal to the UK market. Further, the title's font had to be changed to make it more prominent (Appendix M). Additional research was conducted for covers of similar titles to recognise the reoccurring patterns appearing in similar titles.

Lastly, the cover was edited with Jessica and other team members and included in the final cover selection list (Appendix P). Next, the main three cover options were sent to the project sponsors to confirm it works with their house style that could affect the design work (Appendix Q). Later on, the three main covers were then used to attain clear reader opinions for market research.