A Peek Into The Cover Design Process

Roseanna M. White pens her novels under the Betsy Ross flag hanging above her desk, with her Jane Austen action figure watching over her. When she isn’t homeschooling her small kids and writing fiction, she’s editing it for WhiteFire Publishing or reviewing it for the Christian Review of Books, both of which she co-founded with her husband.

Designing historical book covers can be a challenge--but a fun one. And I was excited to tackle the project for Rachelle Rea and her series that WhiteFire contracted to release in 2015-16!

As a behind-the-scenes encourager of Go Teen Writers, a frequent judge of contests, and a dedicated reader of the blog, I've loved watching the GTWers grow and chase their dreams. And when I received Rachelle's manuscript on my editing desk at WhiteFire, I was excited because I knew her from Go Teen Writers...and a little wary because it's always awkward to give a 'no' to someone you kinda know. Which I've had to do before, LOL.

But as I dove into The Sound of Diamonds, I realized that wasn't going to be an issue here. Because the book is fabulous. And Rachelle is fabulous. And I was immediately excited to get to create some fabulous covers for the books!

But historicals present a challenge. How to find photographs with the right costuming? And in this case, it's a continuity series, so the same heroine needs to be on each cover. But with different dresses. Stock photos let me down, so I turned to the more complicated but better option: photo shoot.

Now, as it happens, I have a gorgeous niece who perfectly fit the description of Rachelle's heroine, Gwyn. Jayna is the right age, the right shape, has the right coloring. And takes ridiculously good photographs.

Moreover, she loves playing dressup in historical clothing and was happy to let me deck her out in the height of Renaissance fashion and make her walk around an old church on a rather cold and blustery day. Thank you, Jayna. ;-)

I called up a local(ish) costume shop and arranged to rent three different gowns in three different hues--because it only made sense to do the shoot for all three covers at the same time. I ordered a diamond(ish) rosary that plays such an important part in book 1.

We took hundreds of photos on that gorgeous but chilly November day, and then I got down to the really fun stuff. Putting together the covers.

Photo selection was key. I started with a few choices for the first gown, the blue one, and tried them out.

Honestly, I had a hard time deciding. But I knew I wanted the rosary in the shot, and I also knew that, because we were missing the glasses that Gwyn wore in the series, we were planning on cropping out Jayna's eyes. So I chose that last photo and zoomed it in to the correct size.

I loved how this left me some empty space in  the upper left to work with my words. But there's a bit too much of a contrast between the door and the blue of her cape--it would be hard to find any one color for the text font that would stand out against both. So I darkened the wood and, while I was at it, faded out the layer at the bottom into the background so that Rachelle's lovely name would have a place to stand out.

Much better! Now, unlike many of my designs, this one didn't require a separate background. Easy peasy then...but it still needed something else. I wanted a texture overtop it to soften and create some layer and light. After much searching, I decided on this one. I faded it out in a few spots (and didn't save it separately beforehand, LOL) to make way for her lovely face.

Fading this out to about 40% opacity gave me this.

Now it was beginning to look like what we envisioned! I decided it was time to start working with the title. The Sound of Diamonds. Beautiful, isn't it? Poetic, and Rachelle draws it out beautifully throughout the story. I wanted to make sure those lovely words got a lovely treatment. I opted to keep most of the words in an elegant but simple capital text. But I wanted some ornateness on Diamonds. After browsing through the wonderful www.dafont.com for a while, I settled on Magnolia and put it together like so.

Just plopping it down on top of the model looked like this.

Not bad. But I wanted a bit of light to highlight Diamonds. I found this free texture.

I set the blend mode to Screen, took the opacity down to 60% and ended up with this.

Next I tackled the series title. This is the Steadfast Love series, and it's set in the 1560s. I wanted a series logo that captured the antiquity of it and also echoed the color of each of the dresses I'd be using (blue, red, green).

That got plopped in that empty space. ;-) And I also added Rachelle's name to the bottom (woot!)

There's just one tiny thing missing--Rachelle and I both have a love for flourishes. So I put one behind her name. =)

And there we have it! The final cover for The Sound of Diamonds, set to release June 15, 2015! The second book will come out 4 months later, the third following in another four months. Those covers are finished too, but they haven't been released yet. You'll have to stay tuned for their cover reveals as we close to their releases. ;-)

Check out The Sound of Diamonds on Amazon!