Book Covers: "The Dream Burner"
Challenge
In this project, we were told to choose a book to design covers for. As a very sentimental person, I decided to do my mothers’ (Heather Lynn Reilly Osial) not yet published book, “The Dream Burner.” We were told to do both a text- focused cover with a more simple background, and an image-focused cover with a more intricate background.
Solution
Without spoiling the book, the image of the hand throwing sand was chosen due to the presence of “The Sandman” within the story, something I felt would be interesting to illustrate through imagery. Similarly, the text-heavy cover’s background was chosen due to the charred look of the background, implying it was burnt, as mentioned in the title. The genre of novel is fantasy, with very dramatic elements implemented throughout. Because of this, I chose to go with more dramatic book covers by using higher contrast images and fonts.
Results
The resulting book covers were bold, elegant, and unique. I learned more about how to balance a composition properly throughout the process of this project. I also learned more about typography and how it can really impact the overall mood of a piece.
Text-heavy book cover displayed on top, image-heavy book cover displayed on bottom.