Designing a Book Cover

We would like to share with you a couple of  successive designs as an example how a design process develops in time.

First,  we wanted to make an ebook without a fancy cover, but marketing experts told us that people buy book-covers, instead of books; even it is an e-Book. The cover should reflect the main message of the book. And be an attention attractor.

From the beginning, we had the idea to use words in different colors, like colored particles in space will  coherent beams of light  in the same colour. The words representing the concepts to apply when using one of the Six Thinking Modes of Edward de Bono.

However, we found it too wordy, conceptual and not so inspiring. We were looking for something more visual and adventurous. At that time we invented the idea of Think Diving.

Think diving had yet to be defined, but it evoked associations with sky diving,  snorkeling under water in the swimming pool, diving from the high shelf, making water bombs, and diving for plates at 4 meters depth.

For part 2, which treats concepts useful in Yellow Hat (logical-positive) Thinking and Black Hat Thinking (logical-negative) the next raw draft was made.

When you are making  a Yellow Hat Think Dive, the diver should actively seek for valuable plates and bring them to the surface. The precious plates are labelled with nouns such as  positive values, does fit, gain, constructive, opportunities, benefits, feasibility, confirmed, strength, grow, hope, yes, because…

A Black Hat Think dive, involves the diver actively searching for pearls of logic-negative thinking. The pearls have names such as danger, not the right box, inconsistency, wrong logic bubble, risk, complexity, hazards, half-truth, barriers, disadvantage, flaws, regret, falsification,no, because….

Think diving is very difficult, because underwater there is not much visibility. It can be dangerous and life threatening. The deeper you dive, the more precautions, equipment and training you need.

Then we asked the artist Amador Rehak for help. He makes paintings on canvas, animations, story boards and  decors. To watch an overview of his work, click here.  He combined the idea of searchlights and Think Diving into a new concept. Powerful searchlights on the seabed.

It was important to get depth in the image, so it was decided to set up a painting on canvas first. It would contain the basic cover for all the five parts of our eBook. Later, in Photoshop, the colors of the beams,  different for each part, would be added.

Amador added some details, as to enhance the idea of exploring beneath the sea surface, on a journey comparable to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Vernes. Go here to Buy our  eBook.

It is now 2013, and Asa and I, wish you good design process and Happy Think Diving!

Photo: “Tablet PC Computer And Books” by adamr