Previous Match Results

Another close battle! Nevernight pulls out the victory by ONE VOTE. Many people struggled with the decision on this one, some even refusing to cast a vote because they were so stricken. The second round is going to be incredible!

Round 1 – Match 8

This is it. The final match of round 1. And it involves my only personal nomination of the whole contest: Sea of Rust. It’s up against a wonderfully illustrated cover that leaves the eye dazzled and the mind asking questions, Ogre Enchanted.

This cover has everything. A beautiful forrest, magical sparkles, some kind of magic rune, and a hooded figure (either basking or freaking out) with some considerable body hair issues. The colours are very nice here as well. Even though they’re coming from different elements, there’s a nice blend from orange to magenta to blue. And in that same gamut, it almost seems like the world is changing from Fall to Spring.

The way the light plays across the whole scene is nice. But especially how it plays with the cloak, shining through in places, showing us something but not everything. It’s a nice touch.

I can’t get over the colours in this cover. Even though there’s no foil or embossing to speak of, seeing this cover second hand really don’t do it justice. Everything bleeds into the next thing. Metal bleeding into rusty metal. Rusty metal bleeding into a rust coloured sky. Sky into sand.

The graveyard of mechanical parts ramps up curiosity. Especially when one, which looks quite whole and untouched by rust, seems to be reaching into the centre of the sun. Our title is a simple font, which I’m a big fan of. Simple doesn’t mean bad. Usually, it’s quite the opposite. Think of every cover you’ve ever seen where someone tried to use something like Comic Sans or Papyrus because ‘it’s different.’ Plus, the text has been treated to look like it’s painted directly on our rusting metal. And you know how much I like the text being part of the scene!

Which will you choose? Leave your vote in a comment below. Share this post with family and friends and stay tuned for ROUND 2, beginning soon!

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.)