I was asked by someone I know if I would do a favor for them. Sure, why not? I’ve got plenty of time at the moment. Basically, she had done a book cover for her family reunion but whatever software she was using was exporting it in too low of a resolution. She sent me the .jpg of the cover she had done and asked if I could redo it in a higher resolution. Piece of cake. She then said something along the lines of, “and if you have any other ideas as a designer…” So I took one look at what she had and thought “Oh yeah. I can do something with this.” And after typing that I also realized that the tone in how I thought/said that is completely lost. Anyhow, here’s the original (that I still duplicated perfectly for her) and the zoomable version of my rendition. This I did in Illustrator. I really like how it turned out. Most of it I think speaks for itself. I like my typography and the rustic sort of color scheme. It’s the sort of book cover that I wouldn’t mind having facing out on a book shelf.
After I did this, she loved it BUT… there’s always a but, isn’t there? She wanted a few changes. Everything that is different in the following are her requested changes. The patriotic color scheme was easily the hardest to work with and I was a little busy otherwise so I didn’t have time to redesign something else entirely before she needed it. These are the results in some of the various color combinations I tried, attempting to get any combination of these colors to look good.
update (6.1.12): found out that this red one is the one that was used. Wait… maybe it was the red and blue one below? Well, it was one of these two. I was shown a short time ago and honestly, didn’t pay too much attention because I was too disappointed that my original idea wasn’t used. Oh well. Moving on 😛
And a slight variation on the orignal, which I will readily admit is actually better designed, but in spite of that, I actually like the main one I have posted better.
(update 6.11.12)
And following is an updated one where I have added a semi-worn effect to the edges (which probably still needs work) and I have fixed some spacing and kerning issues.
