20th
It is difficult to even know where to begin with the story of how and what determined my book’s cover art. There had been a cover, after about 4 bad ideas they ran past me, that was initially deemed THE ONE. It had a spoon with some messy sauce on it, and the title in Helvetica in red and pink. It was originally on the Amazon page for the book (linked above). Then some marketing folks thought it wasn’t exciting enough and we went back to the drawing board.
They came up with about fifty really bad ideas that they ran past me, which I ran past my design guru Gino, who offered sagely exclamations of outrage and disbelief. In the meantime, I tinkered with ideas of my own and so did Gino… and we thought we had a slam dunk with these food-as-letters photos, which he laid out in a stylish vertical-read design.
Finally, they showed me a cover slightly different than the one currently on the book’s Amazon page. I stared for about five minutes in puzzlement upon first opening the file. I asked my co-worker sitting next to me for her thoughts on it and she stared with a weird expression (probably the same one I had) for another thirty seconds or so. She ultimately decided that this was a memorable image, this “vegetable bag,” as she called it. Gino rejected the idea as fairly stupid. But on further pondering and staring with weird expressions, I think the strange image grew on each of us. As Melissa (co-worker) said, “You have to be ready to be known and associated with the vegetable bag from now on.” Okay. So I’m down with that.
The funniest part of the story could be that when I was first sending the cover image to Gino by instant message, at the same time talking to Melissa about it in person, she saw the image surrounded by the lime green “speech bubble” that AIM instant message puts around everything I type to a buddy. The cover image was framed in the lime green speech bubble, and upon first glance, Melissa thought it was part of the cover. When I opened the real file on my screen, she said, “where’s the green?” We both thought the color was nice and fresh. So I suggested a green border to my editor, who got the design team to implement it. And now it’s part of the design.
