Neta Rabin: Elements of Cover Art

Neta has only been at her new job for one week and three days! So welcome her to Klutz, where she is now the Vice President of Product Development. If you were never a child, then you missed out on all of the great Klutz cooking, drawing, gardening, joke, activity, craft and magic books.

Two of the four things Neta says you want a cover to do:

"Ha, made you look!": If you see it on a shelf with lots of other face out covers, does your eye stray to your cover first?

Clarity of content: Who is the buyer? Can you tell from the cover if the book is for three-year-olds or eight-year-olds? Boys and girls, or just girls? Just lawyers?

Neta walks us through the evolution of the cover of HOW DO YOU FEED A HUNGRY GIANT?

The first sketches were very similar to what you see above, but with a tighter crop in, with no sign, just the legs of the giant... which meant the only actual blank space for the title was between the giant's legs... Neta went back and forth with the artist over how to incorporate the title into the cover image (adding a little more of the giant's body, putting the title on a sign that the giant could hold, which nicely echoes action happening in the book).

ILLUSTRATOR TIP! Neta says being able to do hand lettering is a great thing for an illustrator to have in their back pocket.  Neta roughed in the sizes of the words for the title, and Shaw used that as a guide to handletter the title to its final style.

Remember when Neta told us that the cover should make it clear from the get-go what sort of a book it is, what sort of buyer will know this is the book for them? WELL, How Do you Feed a Hungry Giant? is a POP-UP BOOK! Yeah, I know! And the brilliant thing is that the cover has a pop-up element, look at this cool piece that you can pull out of the top of the cover:

HOW COOL IS THIS?!?!?!?

Neta shared more cover tips, some examples of favorite covers and what they have in common, and took time for Q&A, good stuff, guys!

Laurent Linn: Judge This! Anatomy of Creating Book Cover Art

Laurent listening to the voices in his head. They are talking about monkeys. In fact, the voices ARE of monkey origin.

What Laurent looks like when the monkey voices tell him to do a cover titled in Comic Sans.

Lovely lovely Laurent Linn says the cover of your book can make or break it. And the important voices that decide what a final cover will look like are:

• The author
• The editor
• The sales and marketing team (they are your friends!)
• The publisher
• The art director, in this case, Laurent Linn
• The voices in Laurent's head

First cover evolution story: 

Lottie Paris Lives Here
by Angela Johnson, illustrated by Scott Fisher, publishing in a few months.

One of Scott's first cover sketches:

Not only is this cover for the first book, but for establishing what may potentially be the branding of an entire series. The character is important, but so is the setting and some of the props and the question was whether to have all of these non-main character elements on the front cover, or wrapping around from the spine onto the back, or anywhere near the cover. This sketch has elements of props and Lottie's house, and the VOICES decide it should just be Lottie interacting with the type. So Laurent asks Scott for something different.

One of Scott's character-focused cover sketches with type interaction:

Laurent likes this, but rather than explain the tweaks he wants, he can just mock something up in Photoshop and show Scott. Laurent asks Scott to do tons of posture and pose sketches of Lottie. Scott did! And the mock-up below is based on pose #18 from a group of 25 and Laurent's Photoshop mock-up:

Laurent says be prepared to go through all of these sorts of iterations to get to:

Second cover evolution story: 

GIANT STEPS 

by Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee, illustrated by the totally amazing Sean Qualls

Laurent likes to give the manuscript to the illustrator and ask "What's your idea for the cover?" before directing them on what Laurent (or his inner monkey voices) might have in mind. Here's a quickie version of the sketch-to-final with the captions as Laurent's (OR MAYBE IT WAS THE MONKEYS TALKING) take on what was or wasn't working for the cover sketch.

Lovely but Sad

Too sophisticated

Could be taken too literally, those are some big [damn] steps

Final painting, but not quite working, Laurent loves the lettering

Laurent plays with it in photoshop

Sean's final painting

Ooo, now we are seeing the evolution of THE DAGGER QUICK cover by Amy June Bates, which is a middle grade cover. IS IT A COINCIDENCE THAT THERE IS A MONKEY ON THE COVER?

Laurent and his monkey voices says illustrators should STRONGLY PONDER doing illustration work that would fit for middle grade books. Shove some black and white spots and a color cover in your portfolio, yo.

Spots of monkeys.

• Fun fact about Laurent: He doesn't play with cover type too much until the final art is in so he can be inspired by it.
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• Fun fact about Laurent's inner monkey voices: They can sing any Gilbert & Sullivan song in up to four-part harmony.

OH, my goodness. The art for Scott Gustafson's EDDIE is crazy amazeballs.

And then I started hearing monkey voices when I saw a sneak peek of the art for a teen retelling of PINOCCHIO. These photos do NOT do the three cover sketches justice.

Laurent wanted some of the above elements combined and then asked the illustrator to leave room for the title and this is the final.

CHECK OUT THOSE FRICKING WOLVES, man! So good. Who is this illustrator? My newly acquired inner monkey voices were shouting about bananas so I missed hearing the name.

Now it's getting juicy, Laurent is talking about making a cover for a book about undertakers and souls and watches (no monkeys.) Wish you were here to hear!

Elizabeth Parisi – Book Covers: How to fit your style into the current market

Elizabeth personally designs 7-10 covers per list a year, and oversees about 40 per list. Scholastic does 3 lists per year.

Some of the reps and places that Elizabeth relies on for cover artists:

Shannon and Assoc., Berstein & Andriulli, Lott Reps, iSpot

How much time does Elizabeth usually give an illustrator for a job -- from commission to turn in of cover art piece?

• 1 to 2 months
• 2 weeks for a rough
• Another 2 if it is a complicated image or there needs to be revision
• 2 weeks for final art

Flat fee for covers. There are different levels of flat fees, a few are:
World All Media rights – Scholastic gets exclusive rights for 5 years, non exclusive for 2
North American rights (which is less time than World All Media)

Scholastic likes to keep authors paired with illustrators if they seem to click even if the future books aren't part of a series or a sequel.

If Elizabeth loves an illustrator she will use them as much as she can.



Elizabeth designed this cover using art by her husband, illustrator Tim O'Brien (who was sitting right behind me in the workshop!)

POSTED BY JAIME TEMAIRIK