Design Showcase
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W
e’re told not to judge a book by its cover, but it’s a well-known truth that a book cover helps decide who picks it up in the first place. Just as often, the quality of the interior influences whether they keep reading long enough to finish the story, or choose to leave a review. Design work is as important to the artistry of a book as its writing and editing.
All this is to say that designing book covers and interior layouts has been a darling little hobby of ours since 2019! The bulk of our personal experience lies in genre fiction, especially queer fiction and fantasy. We’re happy to work with both mainstream genres and niche genre fusions. A favorite design convention of ours is combining illuminated manuscript references with colorful and eye-catching stylization. Stay tuned for more of that in the future!
Book Covers
Some of these are due for an update, and we have more in the works.
.jpg "This one is a real book! It’s also one of the first covers we’ve ever designed.")
.jpg "This one is real book. Hopefully all the text is legible now. The lighting contrasts in this scene were hard to work with!")
.jpg "This one is going to be a real book. Novella, probably. Maybe a visual novel too, just for fun.")
.jpg "This one might become a real book. We want to update this cover eventually.")
.jpg "This one is a real book! You have no idea how many times we revised this cover. Poor Mep.")
.jpg "This one is going to be a real book. The fountain turned out nice.")
.jpg "This one might become a real book.")
.jpg "This one might become a real book. Or a visual novel. Not sure. Gliss’ face looks nice, but otherwise it's also due for a makeover.")
.jpg "This one is a real book! Crislie is very handsome.")
.jpg "This one is going to be a real book, but not for a bit. It's a prequel to Heralds of Rhimn, starring Gildhe!")
.jpg "This one is going to be a real book. We revamped this cover recently. The liquid turned out very pretty!")
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Interior Layouts (PDF & Print)
Some of these also need updated. Expect there to be EPUB samples in the future as well!
.jpg "This is from Shadow Herald's web PDF. We studied medieval manuscripts like the Book of Hours to figure out the floral designs. Heralds of Rhimn uses very dark, bold decor.")
.jpg "This is from a hypothetical black-and-white print of Shadow Herald. The paper-textured background is removed to save ink.")
.jpg "This was an attempt to design something pragmatic, old-fashioned, and text-over-aesthetic, much like some of the books on editing and typography in our bookshelf.")
.jpg "This layout is derived from a hypothetical practice layout from our Galactic Empress WIP. The artwork and spacing could use an update! But the space background fade is really nice.")
.jpg "This one is the web PDF design for Princess Magnolia. The colors available for digital layouts are far vaster than your options for print layouts, so be sure to check your colors if you're looking to print in color. It would be cool to print this layout on blue paper, though.")
.jpg "This is a practice layout where the text and decor was intended to match that nicely aged public domain artwork.")
.jpg "This was an attempt to branch out of our genre preferences and design something with a classy-yet-brutal mystery feel. It's an alright first attempt.")
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.jpg "This spread was intended to mimic the feeling of eighties shoujo art, and mix it with a fairytale delicacy. The brush strokes might be a little too heavy-handed, but that's alright. The accompanying artwork is ours.")
.jpg "This is a layout we designed around the Berry Rotunda blackletter font for practice. The accompanying artwork is ours. We just felt like drawing a goblin and a dragon girl.")
.jpg "This was an attempt to create a modern layout with geometric motifs to match the Edge Caps font we wanted to experiment with.")
Chapter Headers
.png "These characters are from “Heralds of Rhimn” by the way. This one is Navaeli. I hold her gentle like a sad little muffin. She is enthused about maps, and also very tired.")
.png "This is Atevia. Technically that's her last name, and her first name is Jain, but nobody younger than sixty-five calls her that. She genuinely prefers it that way.")
.png "This is Crislie. Where'd those scars come from? Don't worry about it. It's not self-destructive if it simply happens while destroying other people, right?")
.png "This is Gildhe. Gildhe is an eldest sibling who usually functions as a second parent. They have no hangups about this whatsoever, probably.")
.png "This is Meparik. He is about twelve, and already burdened with the conviction that life isn't fair. He will communicate this in only the most healthy ways, I am sure.")
