Behind the Cover: Bryan Keller & Jordan Castillo Price
As I said the first time I saw the cover for Payback (Channeling Morpheus series #1), I thought Changeling Press was starting a new trend for their covers. All in all the concept is simple, but the color and the subject are so enthralling that you feel compelled to buy the book, and the fact that the book is very good is only a bonus :-) All the cover for Channeling Morpheus are a collaboration between Bryan Keller, Art Director for Changeling Press, and Jordan Castillo Price, author of the books, and so I asked to them to introduce you themself and the covers.
http://www.changelingpress.com/product.php?&upt=book&ubid=897
Who are we?
Jordan: I’m a graphic designer by day, so I get to play with big equipment like stack cutters and folding machines. My favorite recent low-tech addition to my design toys is a blade that cuts a perforated line, so I can make raffle tickets that can be torn in half. My colleagues look on with tolerant amusement as I get excited about things like the perforating blade.
Bryan: Oddly enough, my main job is working in a book store. Many of the authors have told me of their jealousy that I am surrounded with books all day! The graphic art is my second, though arguably my favorite job. It is nice when you can actually earn some income doing something you love.
http://www.changelingpress.com/product.php?&upt=book&ubid=910
Jordan: In 1999 I got my first computer and immediately wrote a book on it! The novel was pretty terrible, but you’ve got to start somewhere. By 2004 I’d sold some short stories to anthologies, and now, after five years of writing for public consumption, I’m doing some serious juggling as my writing career starts to eclipse my day job.
Bryan: The beginnings of my digital art career - lets just say I thought I was pretty hot stuff. As the years go by and I look back on my very early stuff, it can make me cringe at times, but hey, it's all in the learning. I always wanted to be an artist. I tried painting in many styles, but I just never got the knack. Once I took up photography, that's where it all really took off. I would photograph some of my friends, and turn them into fantasy creatures in Photoshop. That's when my skills really took off.
Five years ago I got my degree in graphic art and animation. The instructors at the school definitely gave me the confidence to seek out employment in the art world, a decision I'll never regret.
http://www.changelingpress.com/product.php?&upt=book&ubid=958
The Process
Jordan: Because all of my schooling and training is in visual art and graphic design, I have really specific ideas about what I want in a book cover. I think photographic covers are difficult to do well, because if you simply take a stock photo and slap on some type, it’s not going to capture anyone’s imagination. You need to convey a mood with your photo and your type. And unless you happen to be a photographer yourself, you’re drawing from the same pool of stock photography that the rest of the world is drawing from.
Initially I did a mockup of what I thought visually represented the mood of the stories. The black and white photos feel very urban, which this series really emphasizes. Not so much glamorous big-city urban, but middle America, blue collar, steel mill towns. We then did a color overlay which makes the yellow-gold lettering of the book title pop, because they’re on opposite sides of the color wheel.
I’m a font geek. I knew that if we used a scrawly, distressed font for the title, that the rest of the lettering should be clean and straightforward. I asked for Impact because it’s one of my old standbys that always looks great. (Yes, it’s the LOL Cats font. But I still love it from my days as a T-shirt designer in the 90’s.)
Authors don't usually have this amount of input on their covers. Publishers have to consider a bigger picture than the authors do; they’ve got to market the book, after all. I feel very lucky that Bryan has been so collaborative with me on the cover process. The final result has been one that really stands out, and conveys the exact mood I was looking for.
http://www.changelingpress.com/product.php?&upt=book&ubid=1003
Bryan: Jordan's covers are not "typical" of what I usually create. I found working with her quite refreshing in that she does have very well developed design skills, and can definitely get her ideas across. Jordan supplies me with a mock up image, and it's then my job to recreate her vision into the covers we need at Changeling. I enjoy looking at her mocks and then piecing together the process in my head to duplicate it there before I ever go to the computer.
When an author can be this specific, it really makes my work, well, like not work at all. My job ast art director at Changeling Press has been affectionately compared to herding cats. The visual alone should make some people wonder why I do it. Jordan's covers while not a great creative challenge, where a technical challenge in that I wanted to see how exact I can match my final product to her design vision. Together we managed to come up with some of the more popular covers at Changeling Press, and she really does deserve a lot of the credit for them.
http://www.changelingpress.com/product.php?&upt=book&ubid=1057
http://www.jordancastilloprice.com
Bryan Keller's Fantasy Gallery
http://www.changelingpress.com/product.php?&upt=book&ubid=897
Who are we?
Jordan: I’m a graphic designer by day, so I get to play with big equipment like stack cutters and folding machines. My favorite recent low-tech addition to my design toys is a blade that cuts a perforated line, so I can make raffle tickets that can be torn in half. My colleagues look on with tolerant amusement as I get excited about things like the perforating blade.
Bryan: Oddly enough, my main job is working in a book store. Many of the authors have told me of their jealousy that I am surrounded with books all day! The graphic art is my second, though arguably my favorite job. It is nice when you can actually earn some income doing something you love.
http://www.changelingpress.com/product.php?&upt=book&ubid=910
Jordan: In 1999 I got my first computer and immediately wrote a book on it! The novel was pretty terrible, but you’ve got to start somewhere. By 2004 I’d sold some short stories to anthologies, and now, after five years of writing for public consumption, I’m doing some serious juggling as my writing career starts to eclipse my day job.
Bryan: The beginnings of my digital art career - lets just say I thought I was pretty hot stuff. As the years go by and I look back on my very early stuff, it can make me cringe at times, but hey, it's all in the learning. I always wanted to be an artist. I tried painting in many styles, but I just never got the knack. Once I took up photography, that's where it all really took off. I would photograph some of my friends, and turn them into fantasy creatures in Photoshop. That's when my skills really took off.
Five years ago I got my degree in graphic art and animation. The instructors at the school definitely gave me the confidence to seek out employment in the art world, a decision I'll never regret.
http://www.changelingpress.com/product.php?&upt=book&ubid=958
The Process
Jordan: Because all of my schooling and training is in visual art and graphic design, I have really specific ideas about what I want in a book cover. I think photographic covers are difficult to do well, because if you simply take a stock photo and slap on some type, it’s not going to capture anyone’s imagination. You need to convey a mood with your photo and your type. And unless you happen to be a photographer yourself, you’re drawing from the same pool of stock photography that the rest of the world is drawing from.
Initially I did a mockup of what I thought visually represented the mood of the stories. The black and white photos feel very urban, which this series really emphasizes. Not so much glamorous big-city urban, but middle America, blue collar, steel mill towns. We then did a color overlay which makes the yellow-gold lettering of the book title pop, because they’re on opposite sides of the color wheel.
I’m a font geek. I knew that if we used a scrawly, distressed font for the title, that the rest of the lettering should be clean and straightforward. I asked for Impact because it’s one of my old standbys that always looks great. (Yes, it’s the LOL Cats font. But I still love it from my days as a T-shirt designer in the 90’s.)
Authors don't usually have this amount of input on their covers. Publishers have to consider a bigger picture than the authors do; they’ve got to market the book, after all. I feel very lucky that Bryan has been so collaborative with me on the cover process. The final result has been one that really stands out, and conveys the exact mood I was looking for.
http://www.changelingpress.com/product.php?&upt=book&ubid=1003
Bryan: Jordan's covers are not "typical" of what I usually create. I found working with her quite refreshing in that she does have very well developed design skills, and can definitely get her ideas across. Jordan supplies me with a mock up image, and it's then my job to recreate her vision into the covers we need at Changeling. I enjoy looking at her mocks and then piecing together the process in my head to duplicate it there before I ever go to the computer.
When an author can be this specific, it really makes my work, well, like not work at all. My job ast art director at Changeling Press has been affectionately compared to herding cats. The visual alone should make some people wonder why I do it. Jordan's covers while not a great creative challenge, where a technical challenge in that I wanted to see how exact I can match my final product to her design vision. Together we managed to come up with some of the more popular covers at Changeling Press, and she really does deserve a lot of the credit for them.
http://www.changelingpress.com/product.php?&upt=book&ubid=1057
http://www.jordancastilloprice.com
Bryan Keller's Fantasy Gallery