Sarah Baker - Through the Mirror Door Book Cover - Concept Designed by Will Steele and Illustrated by Jessica Courtney-Tickle
This is one of my favourite book covers this year. It is from "Through the Mirror Door" which has been illustrated by the talented Jessica Courtney-Tickle. I recently read this book and really loved it; (review here) it got me thinking about having the right book cover image that reflects the story inside. The overall book cover is very important as it needs to attract potential buyers and make them pick up the book. It needs to appeal to as many readers as possible. This one encapsulates the story really well, in my opinion, and gives an air of mystery about the plot; gently tickling the brain into thinking about what is behind the cover.
The above image and the two below are progress shots which were produced by the illustrator.
This is the second progress illustration which shows a close up of the house from the first illustration. This is similar perspective to the final book cover.
This is a stripped back version of the above illustration. It is missing the character and a lot of the foreground detail. This allows the illustrator and Will Steele to begin to think about the positioning of the title and the layout of the final cover.
The above image shows a different colour palette in order to investigate which colours will work best for the final cover.
In the image above you will see the perspective has somewhat changed and the colour palette has transformed yet again fantastically. The tweaks and changes that have been applied might possibly be due to the partnership of Will Steele and the illustrator playing around with the concept of the image. It works really well for me as it is crisper, clearer and more focused and the colour palette works really well on this.
This image shows a swirling calligraphic font which was probably disregarded as this was not used in the final selection.
This is the final version of the book cover. I hope that you agree with me that this is a fantastic final production. A lot of thought has obviously gone into the process of such an amazing cover and, in my opinion, it has definitely been worth it.
If you love the illustrations as much as I do please check out other work by Jessica on her website here: http://jessica-tickle.squarespace.com
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