I wanted to take a metaphorical approach to this cover. The hypothetical book I imagined for this cover was a fantasy rich in emotional strife and figurative language, so the main focus for the cover was to get across the strong feelings that the novel would explore.

I knew from the start that I wanted to use a fox to create a sort of trickster archetype on this cover. I wanted to contrast that symbol with the idea of nobility. What if I put this outcast energy into a position of strength and honour? What would it feel like?

My first sketches are always messy, because they’re me just warming into ideas without fully committing to them. If one doesn’t feel right partway through, I’m already thinking of the next one. The elements I had in mind while doing this were swords, hearts, and a kind of delicate leafy trimming.

From these tiny sketches, I picked out a couple I thought had enough potential to work experiment with. The first, on the left, I called “dramatic fox”; on the right, “circle fox”.

I first envisioned Dramatic Fox to have a script-like typeface and to place the author’s name subtly in the corners (represented by X’s). I experimented with how the different elements might play together in greyscale to entire readability. While I liked the atmosphere of the high-key illustration on the leftmost thumbnail, I thought having the type in white would make it stand out more. If I went this route, I’d have to balance that carefully if I wanted to somehow accomplish both.

Circle Fox came out pretty complete in terms of sketches. I was a fan of the delicate details I could’ve put in, but I wasn’t sure if that’d create a confusing composition in the finished product.

I chose Dramatic Fox for its unique composition that would more likely stand out on shelves, moodier imagery, and fewer possible complications formatting the artwork into a complete cover.

Once the illustration was complete, brought it into Affinity Publisher (alternative to Adobe InDesign).

This was my first pass at formatting. I had tried some hand written typefaces during this process, but none of them felt right, so I opted for a royal and elegant serif. Typeface alone didn’t seem to complete the cover’s design, and the back felt way too empty. The spine felt disconnected from the rest of the cover, too.

This is the final version. I opted for a different sans serif typeface to increase readability and made the heart icon white so that more attention was drawn to the heart inside the fox, as it was more interesting to look at than a simple heart and more important symbolically.

I liked the way I broke up the spine with the block of tan, but It was disjointed. Instead, I transformed it into a castle wall, giving the back cover more interest as well as giving hints about the themes of the story. Readers in bookstores will see the spine before they see the cover, so it’s just as important to communicate parts of the story here, too.

The final cover was created with bleed and in CYMK, ready for the printing press. The 1-inch spine was an arbitrary number for this project since the manuscript didn’t exist, but in a project with a completed manuscript, the spine would be adjusted according to the page number and specifications needed by the printing company.