Book Cover

Final cover design by Daisy Laparra

Starting Point

This book was self-published by the author and he was designing the cover himself. Here is what I inherited as the starting point of this project.

Target Audience

The design of this book cover was carefully crafted to target the intended audience: both males and females. The author was very clear on the fact that he wanted this book to appeal to anyone in a toxic relationship, but not gender-specific. In order to achieve this, the stock image was carefully chosen so that no matter who picked up the book, didn’t feel that he/she/they were being portrayed as the toxic person in the relationship.

Recommended Changes

Initially, the author wanted two photos of himself on the cover - one on the front and one on the back - because he wanted to keep it gender-neutral. I advised him that it was best to keep, at most, one photo of himself and that we should do either all text on the cover or include a photo of a couple.

When we began exploring photos of couples for the cover, some of the photos included a female walking away, or vice-versa. Again, because this was meant to be a book geared toward anyone in the relationship, I recommended a photo in which neither party was walking away from the other. It needed to feel like the author wasn’t implying that this book was for husbands or wives specifically.