Books & Pixels

I couldn’t let Cover Monday end without a good sequence of covers for one of our books: I always find it interesting to have a sort of “before & after”.

The cover on top left is the first one we tried for this noir set in LA and centered around the death of Marilyn Monroe. We wanted something dark that could give the idea of a sordid secret behind the death of the actress. However Marilyn had such a striking, immediately recognizable face that it seemed like a waste not to show it clearly to the reader.

The following mock-up covers used different photos taken of the actress; we didn’t want her to be too happy or smiley which is why we decided to focus on the last two pics. I personally like the last one: Marilyn is seated and she looks tired, her eyes focused on the reader but also on something that might be behind him. It is the image of a beautiful woman, but also of someone who has something slightly off about her. We tried playing with the background and the font to give the cover a slightly edgier look. The final result is not perfect (I still feel the background cover is a tad too colorful) but it’s a good starting point to get to the final design.

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