Month: March 2014

Outside Duluth

The author says:

A nonfiction collection of forty previously published magazine articles about family outdoor adventures:

Outside Duluth will take you on an armchair tour of one of the best regions for outdoor fun in the US. Join Eric Chandler as he takes you cross country skiing, biking, paddling, and running with his family near the head of Lake Superior. Chandler’s stories are part essay, part guidebook and all fun. Find out why Outside Magazine named Duluth runner-up for the best adventure hub in the whole world!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Nathan says:

I really like all the elements; it’s a good cover. I especially like how the sky has gone from being simple negative space to an active design element.

If it were me, I’d play with rejiggering some of the spacing.  There doesn’t seem to be any reason for the title text to be slid to the left; it creates an odd margin over to the right that’s especially noticeable given the centering of the byline and the mirror positions of the children.

While I’m at it, I’d try moving the byline even further to the top, emphasizing the colorful sky as a deliberate design choice.

I’d also toy with moving the children further down into the snowfield rather than up touching the title.

Other thoughts?

Valentine

The author says:

VALENTINE is about a young woman who becomes so desperate to escape from her drug-fueled lifestyle that she marries a handsome stranger with ‘traditional’ values and returns with him to an isolated community that’s been living off the grid for the last hundred and twenty years.

valentine

valentine

Nathan says:

This is a striking cover. Only two comments:

1. Looking at it gives me no idea of the genre.  Spy thriller? Detective-vs.-serial-killer? Paranormal romance?  (The title might give it a tincture of romance that the image doesn’t suggest.) It’s a terrific image, but can you gamble that it’ll be enough to get readers to click through or flip it over to read the summary?  I’d put a tagline directly above or below the title that clarifies it.

2. I think the two-tone title works well. But the two-tone byline had me looking for a hidden meaning in what was highlighted and what wasn’t.

Other thoughts?