What's in a fantasy book cover? Taking another look at Second Sight.
When designing the second book in the Tale of the Lifesong fantasy series, I was free to do what I wanted, because I knew nobody would buy it without first buying The Riddler's Gift. So I designed it to appeal to converted fantasy fans rather than the wider readership that was intended for the first book.
It is a full-blown fantasy novel, with no attempts to make it an 'easy read'. It is darker, more layered, and much more personal.
The idea behind the design is 'learning to see the world in a different way', or through second sight. The idea is reinforced by placing the title brightly lit in the foreground, which means you have to change your focus to see Tabitha looking at you from behind the design.
So the colours (especially when printed) are darker than the first book, which help to provide contrast with the title to lift it off the page. This theme is echoed in the book, which has dark atmosphere of collapse and impending ruin to frame the delicate beauty of lifesong.
It's more personal, because Tabitha's face is closer (once you see it). The sprites are still there, but now they are flying through the gold of order-magic.
After a while, you might see the big swan and smaller swan, that echo the goddess Ethea and her channel, Tabitha. You'll only appreciate that reference much later in the book, but that's the kind of fun you can have with a design when you're the author and there's no pressure to follow a commercial template. I could make this one my own.
After a while longer, you might see that the background has an overlay of text, which are the words of order-lore that are imposed on Tabitha and the world. The barren earth beneath helps to convey the rough, brutal quality of chaos-torn life in Oldenworld, which contrasts with the perfect, clean lines of the order-formed double-S. Okay, maybe some of these things only mean something to me, but I felt by including them in the design it would hint that there were some other things going on you might not be able to decipher (maybe if you had second sight, you'd be able to see?). Once again, I'm hoping to leave an intriguing impression, to make you 'turn the book over'.
The typography of the author name is now better, and I'll probably retain this styling in future to try establish some kind of branding. Display fonts (as used in the Riddler's Gift cover) are often overdone – this Charlemagne font does the job better than the Morpheus font ever did.
What I wish I could do, is graphic art like this Angel by Song Yuefeng. The fallen goddess and the delicate girl who mourns her is gothic, textured; beautiful. As soon as I saw it, I knew Tabitha had to see this as a dream, and I wove it into the story of Second Sight, discovering what it meant, who the goddess was, and why Tabitha had to protect her at all costs.
That single image had the power to communicate a story. In essence, both authors and artists are doing the same thing. Framing an idea, using elements in just the right place, juxtaposing light and dark, texture and form, colours and neutral areas, subjects and negative space, to communicate something beautiful.
I'm first and foremost an author, so for you to see my ideas, you have to read my books. As you do so, you build something in your mind that is more than just an image: it is alive, and it is yours, because you have participated in its creation.
That is the magic of reading.
