The author says:
Non-fiction history of the German 65th Infantry Division. A standard divisional-level history, in English, of a World War II German formation that served in Netherlands, France and Belgium as coastal defence, and in combat in Italy throughout the Italian Campaign. The division is not well known, definitely *not* one of the elite formations of the war, and suffered heavy losses throughout its combat career at the Sangro, Anzio, the Gothic Line, and the retreat over the Po where it was finally destroyed. Nicknamed the “hand grenade division” after its distinctive vehicle insignia.
Nathan says:
I think you’ve got the makings of a workable cover here. Here’s what I would do:
- Crop out the unused border space.
- Take out that scribbled-over texture on the photo; it only obscures and doesn’t add anything. In fact, I’d experiment with putting over the plain gray-green background instead. And make the photo “pop” more with lighter highlights.
- There’s no reason for the byline to be the smallest text on the cover. There’s also no reason to italicize it.
- I don’t think that the “title flush left, subtitle flush right, byline centered” scheme works. Just put the byline flush right under the subtitle, with just enough space between to separate them.
Other comments?
Everything that Nathan just said, seconded.
The main things are to get the image to fill the available space more and to try to find a more appropriate typeface.
Rather than the rounded title font, try an ALL-CAPS sans serif or period appropriate serif. You can google various books about German divisions (Photographical history of the German 126; Panzer Lehr division; Brandenburger division; etc.) for ideas. Just keep it a bit more textook-look than rounded, as the rounded makes it look less serious.
I’d have to mock it up to see if it’s too-too, but I might even consider a military stencil-esque font, see if that works. Sometimes, that can come across too hokey, so you have to be careful with it…but if that’s not viable, I would certainly consider something roughed or distressed, to convey the same. And yes, I agree, the rounded sans is too soft-looking.
The green background is just too much of a good thing–too much OD Green, in other words. Green is one of those colors that doesn’t sell well in many environments–dresses, for example (you rarely see a green dress at the Oscars or the like), and book covers too. If you must have the greeny filter for the image itself, I’d find something else for the bordering frame/background.
I’d consider making the outer background either…I don’t know, black (?) or even a creamy beige to get some contrast going. Right now, it’s too monochrome and at thumbnail size, it all sinks into an OD Green unreadable stamp. It’s tough to come up with complementary colors on OD Green that doesn’t make your eyes bleed, unfortunately, which is why I suggested, possibly, black or creamy-tan.
It sounds like you’re looking for a cover that looks neat and professional but which doesn’t need to do much selling or persuading?
It’s a very particular bit of history, whose buyers are presumably going to be people already researching this particular regiment.
So the cover doesn’t need to do anything except signal competence and reassure the researcher that this is a book put together with professional standards.
If I’ve gauged it right, the elements you’ve included are well chosen, it’s just that they could do with being put together differently. The photo is well selected to convey the mood of ‘ordeal’. It seems worth including the regimental emblem as you have since, again, the people potentially buying the book are likely to be doing very specific research so it’s a nice clear note of the specific subject matter.
Like Nathan says, dump the big border; it looks unprofessional and it makes it harder to see the pertinent details of the photograph, especially at thumbnail.
If your photo is landscape or square and therefore unable to fill the portrait space of a cover, a solution would be to use a colour band to house the title and subtitle. It’s not a choice you might make on a commercial history book cover, but for this kind of unflashy, functional zone it’s a perfectly good choice for helping the cover look neat, clear and well-balanced.
Here’s an example of a basic but serviceable cover that would suit this kind of very specialist subject audience:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/dadceed785b76139b5a68acf747b515d/a16e0f3b90fa5338-df/s2048x3072/7b876110e9ace857e07611c22ee94481c12f43d2.png
Nice job, Kata.
I’d add that a matching, but much narrower, colorband on the bottom might solve the readability issue around the byline, too.
Great feedback, everyone, I truly appreciate it, thank you.
Is there a specific reason for the stielhandgranate? It seems to be interfering with the title.