book cover illustration for The Artemis Effect

A little while ago I was asked if I was interested in designing a cover for an ebook.

The book is The Artemis Effect by author Kasia James. It is a character driven story set in the near future, and follows the adventures of three people in different countries who must survive a world-wide collapse of communications, technology and society.

How could I say no?

We all know a cover isn't just a pretty picture with some text - it is one of a book's most important promotional assets. So I read the book, then the author and I had a number of discussions. Based on these discussions I presented a selection of rough concept drafts before we settled on one, which was then worked into final art.

Our priorities were to

• indicate something of the story's content, style and genre
• create a design which communicates to the right audience
• for the title and author's name to be very clear, even when previewed at tiny sizes

I could go on about all the careful cover design choices made, but actually I don't want people to see a bunch of design decisions, I simply want people to think "Yeah, characters I can identify with dealing with an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario... this book is for me!"

Do you think we succeeded?

You can buy The Artemis Effect here (Kindle edition)

You can find Kasia James' blog here