Bad Cover Art…Redesigned: Daisy’s War
Welcome to Bad Cover Art…Redesigned! Where I bring you the most horrible of all cover art I can find on the world wide web and try to come up with an alternative (that I hope is better).
This week I bring to you: Daisy’s War by Shayne Parkinson
According to Amazon, Daisy’s War is about a girl who lives in a quiet New Zealand valley (she’s called Daisy…who’d have thought :o). Soon the Great War begins to encroach on her idyllic life and as she sees more and more men go off to fight in Europe the War strikes closer to home.
I now bring to you Daisy’s War…Redesigned!
Thoughts –
This week again I wanted to try another genre that wasn’t Fantasy or Science Fiction so I landed on Historical Fiction and found the original cover. I kind of get what the original cover is trying to do with the daisy field and the poppies but perhaps they didn’t have the means to execute it effectively. I still liked the original idea of merging these two flowers together in a form of symbolism though.
I thought it would be better to try a lone poppy and a lone daisy and put them together. So I set off on a search on deviant art and found some vector shapes that worked. Then in contrast to the flowers I wanted a kind of darkened, old fashioned looking texture for the background because I thought this would bring through more of the war and historical theme.
It took me a while to settle on the font because anything I put onto the cover just seemed to cheapen it and the above result is the happiest I’ve gotten with it. I had a search on Amazon through the Historical Fiction section and found that a lot of fonts were either gold or white so I tried to stick to that.
I do prefer the new one because I think it fits into the marketing better. It could quite happily sit within the Historical Fiction section of a bookshop and look like it belonged. I think the original is a little too vague as to what genre it is. I mean of course the title gives a clue but the cover somewhat says modern to me. I think the redesigned cover gives more of a sense of the history and maybe the mood.
Process –
Step 1 – Put the texture into place on the background
Step 2 – Added and readjusted the poppy
Step 3 – Added daisy vector and then took the stem from the poppy flower and matched it with the daisy
Step 4 – Played around with what to put at the bottom and settled with the writing paintbrush
Step 5 – Decided on two separate fonts for the main title. Chose the fonts and played around in the Blending Options. I ended up mostly using Bevel and Emboss and a Drop Shadow to get the current effect.
Step 6 – Add author name
Elements –
Daisy’s Font – Zapfino
War Font – Perpetua Titling MT
Author Font – Trajan Pro
Thanks for taking a look! 🙂
I really like both of these covers! I think your re-work makes the mood clearer, though I don’t entirely agree with the simplicity (but that’s just me!)
Your font for the title is far superior! The author’s name is perhaps lost a little though?
<3
I’d consider playing around with overlay or something? To be able to use a nice vivid, active picture like the one on the first cover without making the text seem really flat and amateur? Also, adding the poppy was weird on the first cover, where it looks natural in yours. haha.
I did actually do that but didn’t mention it lol I got a few photos of poppy fields and played around with the opacity and overlay to see if I could get an interesting look with the texture and the photo but it just seemed off and I couldn’t find anything that worked enough that I would use it. But the composition of the original cover is nice…even if the poppies seem a little weird!
Oh wow! This would’ve took me forever to think of an idea to redesign a cover for a book. This is why I’m a writer and not a cover designer for books.