Previous Match Results

Match 2 has come to close and it was an absolute blow out. Jackaby snagged every single vote! Four Dead Queens is a fine cover, but this contest is for the very best of the very best. Voting might be easy now, but it’ll only get tougher and tougher as we get deeper into the rounds.

Round 1 – Match 3

Now we come the contest of the girl standing front and center. One holds a sign, the other wears a Hot Dog costume. 

Hot Dog girl is a fantastic illustration. The art is well done and the style is cool. If I didn’t know if was a novel, I might think it’s the cover to a graphic novel. Notice the level of detail. It’s not just carnival rides in the background, there’s also a bunch of trees. These people aren’t just standing on some purple background. We can see the lines to the cement pads making up the ground. And the trash lying around sporadically is a really nice and realistic touch.

I haven’t read this one, but I’d wager that when being introduced to various characters In the book, readers are likely to flip back and see if that character appears on the cover.

The title font isn’t bad, but it could be better. I’d prefer to see something a little cleaner. Take that slight squiggle out of it and I’d have no issue at all. The colour is really great. Gives me the impression of perpetual sunset. Very interesting.

The Hate U Give goes the opposite way. The key is simple. Clean, white, ‘less is more’ approach. A simple cover done well is impressive. Simple design isn’t simple to do. But I can’t count how many times a cover with a lot of white space has drawn my eye.It can be sitting on a shelf surrounded by full-colour, graphically intense covers and still I end up looking to the one with white space.

The only thing I would have done differently is to give Starr’s sign a bit of colour or maybe an outline. Without, her hands, legs and top of her head all seem to be floating. It’s easy enough to put together that she’s holding a sign, but for a split second it’s just a bunch of autonomous body parts.

Which will you choose? Leave your vote in a comment below.

Note: Between education and career, I have over 15 years of experience in the field of graphic design. While I don’t pretend to know everything about design, and it will always be extremely subjective, I feel like I can speak about it with a modicum of authority (or at the very least, I don’t sound completely clueless.)