I am a frustrated book cover creator. I can deal with the actual steps of designing a book cover, to a rudimentary extent anyway. What I’m frustrated with is my total lack of eye for cover design.
I know in my head what I want a cover to look like and to represent, but I simply can’t translate what’s in my head to the cover. I think part of my problem is that I over-think what the cover should look like, and then I make it too complicated and the whole thing looks like doggie do-do.
I’ve watched tutorials, which have not been particularly helpful. I haven’t found the tutorials that address my design needs, and I don’t know how to remedy that. I’m all out of ‘keywords’ for searching.
I’m not aspiring to design book covers for anyone but myself. I just need book covers to be good enough to meet my father-in-law’s criteria: “It’s good enough for the girls I go with.” (And then my mother-in-law would smack his arm and give him her best frowny-smiley face.) 😉
I’m going to have to face the reality that I don’t have an ‘eye’ for perspective when placing people, objects, and text on a cover. They always turn out looking a lot like this, and they’re just about as appealing.
It’s not that I’m too stingy to pay for book cover design. Not at all. I just want to learn how to make my own book covers.
I have a stubborn streak that resists letting go of projects that I really need to let go of. I’m not quite there yet. I haven’t reached the total and abject hopelessness of admitting, and embracing, failure. It’s coming, though. I can feel it peering over my shoulder, and laughing hysterically at my goofy attempts at cover design.
And there we are for this first Monday in October.
Until we meet again,
I hear you on this. Designing my site and making my own graphics is so much fun for me. But I’ve yet to create a cover that I like. I don’t think I have the eye for it either.
I was able to do my design my website, too. I can make book promotion graphics and such…even put a video together. But a cover? Nada. Zilch. Zero.
LOL I think you’re ahead of me with the promotion graphics and video. I wanted my book to be available in paperback, but I just don’t have the confidence where the cover is concerned.