Portfolio Gallery
A major work of nonfiction for which I was privileged to design the cover. The publishing company was Abingdon Press of Nashville Tennessee. This is a new edition of an already existing book. At the time, I felt lucky to have been in the position to re-design the cover of a book that I was assigned to read in college, several years earlier!
Don't you love trains? Shown is a fictionalized representation of a Russian train on the Trans Siberian Railroad. Note the wrap-around effect of the frozen tundra of the Russian landscape. Kind of reminds one of the movie "Dr. Zhivago." Cover is reproduced with permission of the author.
The bright red and pink suggest the love interest, and the computer with the crime scene banners across it suggests the mystery part of the story.
This cover features work of the well-known world class calligrapher and the author of several best-selling books on calligraphy, Timothy R. Botts. Interestingly, I was privileged to work under him full-time at Tyndale House Publishers in Wheaton Illinois. He is the type of guy that everybody likes, and does a service to the community of art by publishing his calligraphy prolifically.
In this moody and romantic scene, we see the far away horizon line which provides plenty of depth, and the castle which adds mystery and intrigue.
Kind of a whimsical look on her face. Not too sad, and yet not smiling either. The photographer had appropriately titled his photo "Dreary Beauty."
A recent series of 5 books in the Cozy Mystery genre. Cozy Mystery is a relatively new sub-genre of Crime Fiction, where sex, violence, and cursing are kept to a minimum, and often happen off stage. The tone of cozies is generally light, comedic, and comforting. The author liked my suggestion for Book 4, Spearmint for Spies, and we kind of developed the rest of the series from there.
A sequel which plays upon the desire within all of us to experience hope realized. A reviewer wrote that the author had "struck gold again."
Dan Foote is the talented artist and humorist who created this wonderful illustration. The medium is water-color paint on rough water-color paper. I had discovered Dan through one of the editors who worked with me when I was over at Abingdon Press in Nashville TN. Abingdon Press is an imprint of The United Methodist Publishing House.
The color scheme on this cover helps to show depth. The deep blues of the sky recede, while the warm colors of the foreground come forward.
Here we see a series of 2, keeping the same basic design but changing the pictures of the women above the title and the science-fiction scenery below. Science Fiction and Fantasy are wonderful genres to design for, because you can let your imagination run wild a little bit, seeking colorful and mysterious settings with the excitement and drama of looking to the distant future.
An interesting nonfiction work. The author wanted to keep the cover light and airy with lots of color.
Here's an example where the author wanted to express his own thoughts about religion and Christianity, while quoting various scholars of the past.
This is a book I designed while working at The Publishing House in Nashville Tennessee. Here, I combined two separate photos in Photoshop to create one nature scene. In this scene, I was lucky that the top part of the picture corresponded to the word "Hope," and the bottom part related to the words "Hard Times."
Note the continuation of the front cover background wall around to the back cover. This helps the viewer to read the back cover, and to buy the book. I had to combine six separate photos in Photoshop to create this digital illustration—The two separate characters, the Bible, the table, the candle and the background texture.