The Book Covers Project, Part 1: On This Day in The Wars of the Roses
The first book I’m going to try and create a cover for is called “On This Day in The Wars of the Roses”, which should be quite challenging, given the length of the title.
The book’s author, Dan Moorhouse, sent me a message with some information about the book
The wars of the roses was a civil war in England 1455-87.
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I hadn't begun thinking of a cover just yet as the book needs finishing and proofing so its an entirely blank canvas so far as I'm concerned
I’ll be honest with you: historical fiction book covers is not something that I’ve attempted before, and being from Cyprus, I also hadn’t heard of the Wars of the Roses, so I did what any designer worth their salt would do: I did research. On Wikipedia. Hey, that counts!
Apparently, the entire thing was a Game of Thrones-style clusterfuck, only without the fire-breathing dragons and the perky titties.
Skimming through the text, i decided that my design should probably contain two things: some kind of rose illustration or photo and, because of the time period, a legible blackletter typeface.
I’m not a huge fan of blackletter typefaces and subsequently I hardly have any in my font folder but the one I have used in my typography book (Chomsky) seems to fit the bill. Chomsky is free for personal and commercial use, so there are not restrictions there.
Tomorrow, at the design phase, I may reconsider the use of a rose on the cover, as this could conceivably confuse readers by giving the cover a more “romance book” vibe.
Here’s a quick 5-minute design I did, which is probably not going to be representative of the final result, but it felt good experimenting for a bit with Chomsky, the rose photo and Gallos Uncial. It’s also in a square format, which will not work for a book cover, unless it’s for an audiobook.
Be sure to check back tomorrow to see what I’ll come up with!
