I've been meaning to post this particular transformation GIF for a while—I think it goes to show that when they're edited beyond recognition, overused stock models can still have 'unique design' potential.

For reference, here's a handful of covers I found also featuring this model—he's certainly recognizable!

There are certain Making of Monday posts where GIFs speak louder than screenshots (or words). This is one of them. 😉

Now, to present some Things of Possible Interest...

• Reading: I'm currently on book #3 of the Eat, Pray, Die series, which follows the adventures of a professional poison taster working for the rich and famous in LA. If you've read/like Colleen Helme's Shelby Nichols series (about a housewife-turned-mindreader whose newfound powers pull her into the world of organized crime), you might enjoy this series—I'm finding them to be similar in tone. Both are available via Kindle Unlimited! (The Shelby Nichols series—which is nine books long, by the way—is why I started giving KU my money. #worthit)

• Listening to: Greg Graffin (lead singer of Bad Religion) just released a new solo album called Millport. While I'm not blown off my ass by it like I was with Cold as the Clay, I'm still happy to listen to it on repeat. The titular track is my favorite. (Bonus points to Sawmill for reminding me of Firefly.)

Until next time!

—Kat

Who says single-image covers have to be boring? ;-)

Due to high industry demand, I'm finally jumping on the "soup cover" bandwagon. #whowouldathunkit

When working with stock photos of people, it's especially important to whip your selected images into highly unique cover art—the further you deviate from the original aesthetic/cropping of the photo, the less likely you are to see another cover that looks nearly identical to yours! (See an especially extreme past transformation here.)

Coming soon to my website and Etsy. If you'd like first dibs on this cover, please send me an email!

Hey there! This week, I'd like to share the inspiration for (and images behind) a couple of recent non-book cover designs: On Top of the World and Validity.

The inspiration:

Ascend by Frank Moth	Creative Set by Koivo

I particularly appreciated the juxtaposition of vintage illustrations with a modern design aesthetic in Ascend and the geometric styling/bold colors of Creative Set. Using these two works as inspiration, my goal was to design a loose intersection of both styles by melding public domain vintage illustrations with modern, "techy" design elements.

This design, On Top of the World, is currently available on Redbubble in a variety of formats (as are Ascend and Creative Set!).



After finishing On Top of the World, I wanted to create a second design that, like Ascend, features a color-blocked circle, (mostly) neutral colors, and keeps the vintage illustrations front and center.

(Still debating the merits of the white square...*sigh*)

The resulting design, Validity, is also available on Redbubble in an equally splendid variety of formats.


Exploring this whole other world of graphic design has been wonderful. I'll post more about my latest Redbubble designs in the coming weeks—for now, I'll shower you unceremoniously with some of my favorite product images.

I may have ordered this...

...and this...

(For the uninitiated: "Savage AF" means
"savage as fuck," i.e. something that's
awesome/hilarious in its brutality or offensiveness.
For example...)

...and this...

...possibly even this...

...hell, I just want 'em all. 

A few Redbubble shopping tips:

• If you buy six+ stickers, they'll discount them all by 50%.
• Greeting cards and postcards are discounted by 20-30% depending on how many you purchase (8+).
• Low on funds? Consider ordering 4x6 postcard versions of the designs you like—they're generally around $2 each before bulk order discount/promo codes kick in!
• Watch out for sales. They have 15-20% site-wide sales semi-regularly, and I'm pretty sure that applies on top of all previously-mentioned discounts. Sweet.

It's been almost six months since I've done a 'Making of' Monday post—say whaaaaat?!

Available here.

In retrospect, I think the ornate lettering of The Lunar Chronicles' covers and the overall aesthetic of Insurgent subconsciously inspired this design. Storm Fall was definitely out of my comfort zone, so mission accomplished! (I'm making a point of branching out into new genres this year.)

Cover sales have also surged this year, which is continually mind-blowing for me because I am being paid to do something fun. I even found a copycat who ripped off some of my stuff on Etsy, which was equal parts flattering and rage-inducing. Milestones, y'all.

I'VE CLEARLY HIT THE BIG TIME YOU GUYS

For sale—first come, first served! via Website / via Etsy

My pre-made designs have been pretty 'cheery' so far, so I enjoyed going for more of a gothic look this time. (This design in particular really demonstrates how a handful of stock images can become something unique and unexpected!)

For sale: on my website / Etsy (first come, first served!)

Although getting these textures to work in harmony was a challenge, I had an overall awesome experience designing this cover! (Illustrations are not my strongest suit, so being able to create something 'artsy' like this anyway is stupendous...)

Designing a cover before I write the book is my 'thing.' It just makes the novel feel more tangible from the start; and if that's not motivating, hell, I don't know what is. The thing about this trilogy is that I'd like to seek representation for it one day, so this cover—assuming things progress favorably in the traditional publishing realm—will have been designed just for fun. (D'oh!)


Somewhat related:

I wrote the first installment, Opal Sky, during last year's NaNoWriMo. In doing so, I successfully completed the #50K5DAYS challenge and ended up writing about 70K in total—not as great as my 2012 total of 100K+, but it's still nothing to sneeze at. ;-)

Like last year, I have high hopes of knocking out some drafts to mold and chisel in 2015. The plan is to book a hotel room and try to write the first 50,000 words of Amber Dawn in one day (also known as #50kkillmenow and #50k1day), write another 50,000 words in some consecutive five-day period (aka #50K5DAYS), and maybe even slap down a third 50K if I'm feeling good about myself. I don't know which much-neglected project would receive those extra words, but I should probably figure that out soon...

I actually had similar ambitions last year, but I burned out after convincing myself that Opal Sky was the worst thing I had ever written (which is so completely untrue—bad Kat, bad!) and that I'd made a huge mistake. Here's hoping I'll remember how exciting it was to read that reasonably compelling and not too terrible draft eight months later!

It's been almost three months since my last Making of Monday post—d'oh!

Although challenging to execute, this Divergent and Elusion-inspired cover was a barrel of freaky futuristic fun.

Stock images ROCK.

But if you're going to license a stock image, you need to do so with the understanding that literally anyone else can license and use that same image. If you want to protect the branding of your novel, you'll have to get creative with how you (or your designer) edits images for your cover art.

I know it's tempting to use stock images that look book cover ready as-is, but DON'T DO IT—that's a mindset that leads to multiple authors having the same cover art.



Lame, right?

The good news is that you can avoid this by significantly altering your stock photo(s). For example, I usually incorporate multiple images into my cover designs because including more design elements pretty much guarantees that I won't be seeing the same cover artwork anywhere else.

To illustrate (or in this case, Photoshop) this point, I licensed a stock image of a woman in profile view and challenged myself to use her in four unique designs. Although there's a little overlap between covers (same title/author formatting text for Stella and Forest, long blonde hair in Forest and Painted), I feel each design still looks drastically different from its source image.

Unedited Image, NFS

Because I used 3-5 design elements per cover, it's pretty much guaranteed that you'll never share the same design with another author ever. (Speaking of which, they're available for sale here!)

If you'd like to see more mirror covers, just google "same cover different book." The number of big-time, traditionally published novels with cover siblings is surprising...

Click here for a higher resolution version of the final covers.


The cover I’m featuring today was…challenging. I actually kept working on it after the recording ended so that I could fix little things in various areas. (The cat didn’t make the final cut—damn, right?)

And if you thought this was interesting...sharing is caring, yo.

Tweet

I had a good excuse for missing last week's Making of Monday—I got hitched!

After just three glasses of champagne. Lightweight.

This week is going to be a little different. The breadth of my stock image collection has made it damn near impossible to find all of the images I need for my Making of Monday posts. If I don't start finding what I need when I need it, these posts will cease to be interesting.

So guess what I did for this week's post instead?

A CHALLENGE.

A you-can-only-use-these-four-randomly-selected-images challenge.

To be honest, I usually have to do quite a bit more work on the art itself...so this isn't really representative of a typical session.

But hey, I'm not complaining.

(I just wish I could have left the review text white. Curse ye, sporadically light-colored background!)

So, do you want to see more of these? Should they replace the current Making of Monday feature, or should they become a new feature unto themselves?

And if you thought this was interesting...sharing is caring, yo.

Tweet

Oh, man. I finished over a dozen covers last week—that means I'm set for at least three month's worth of these posts. Because my volume of output has increased that substantially, I might start featuring 2-3 covers per week so that you won't see stuff I did in May only just showing up here in September.

Here are two covers that are currently available for sale on kmwritingdesign.com and Etsy. (I decided to start selling on Etsy to gain more exposure; of course, the whole "one-author-per-cover" thing hasn't—and will never— change. Once a design is sold on one site or the other, it's GONE!)

The Secret Life was one of those labor-intensive covers that didn't completely 'click' until the last minute. The version I posted it to my writer's group for feedback had the larger set of poppies coming straight up from behind the title. There were many suggestions thrown around, but the one that worked out was to move them to the side (as seen above). I may or may not have died a little inside from my lapse in judgement, but hell...people don't always nail these things on the first try, right? ...Right? 

Please tell me I'm right. 

First of all, I LOVE that those aren't even her eyes. I don't know what led me to think that I could get away with such trickery, but for a freakalicious cover like this...well, I'd say it works. Unlike The Secret Life, this one fell into place like

...which was, surprisingly, actually the case with the majority of the covers from this last batch. Like with all other things that require practice, the ability to visualize and then pretty accurately realize a specific design does in fact develop over time! (This totally contradicts what I blathered on about in last week's post, of course.)

*raises glass, takes sip*


Until next time, here's a preview of more Making of Monday covers to come!