affinity designer The Piston Princess Saga – Experimental Book Cover

[GarryP]

Cassie Farnsworth is a sassy 17-year-old living in 1930’s America.
While testing her uncle’s new design for a one-person submarine she finds herself uncovering a smuggling ring.
She has to tell the authorities, but her first problem is how to get out the docks alive...

I’m not entirely happy with all of it but I’ve probably ‘faffed on’ a bit too much already, so it’s time to get on with other things.

It was imagined as the first of a four-part series, the titles being: Sucker Punch; In A Squeeze; The Big Bang; Blown Away.
(People with an affinity – pun not intended – for all things engine-related may see the reason why there are four books in the series.)

All done in Designer with some (modified) vector silhouettes from here and there (to save time, and because I’m not good at drawing stuff).

Note: The original (awful) mock-up, commented on below, has been moved to the ‘reveal panel’.

Spoiler

 

Edited May 31, 2024 by GarryP
Replaced image.

[MEB]

Hi @GarryP,
The perspective of the spine is a bit off, unless you intended the book to be slightly open, but the shadow doesn't help clarify this – it's a bit diffuse. Otherwise, it's fine. I like the cover's design.

[walt.farrell]

14 minutes ago, MEB said:

The perspective of the spine is a bit off, unless you intended the book to be slightly open

Even if that were the intention, it feels to me like the spine is slightly thicker at the top than the bottom.

Overall I like the design, too.

[jmwellborn]

 

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

 it feels to me like the spine is slightly thicker at the top than the bottom.

 

  Optical illusion, methinks.  On my centimetres ruler, they are the same.

[Ash Eldritch]

Very Nice. Though I think it would look even better if "Sucker Punch" were done in a 1930s Movie influenced font.

The current font gives a more "American Ninja" vibe to me. But that could just be me...

[Alfred]

14 hours ago, MEB said:

The perspective of the spine is a bit off, unless you intended the book to be slightly open

The spine wouldn’t really be doing its job properly if it changed according to whether the book is slightly open or not.

[GarryP]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

With hindsight, that ‘3D mock-up’ was truly awful so I’ve moved it to a ‘reveal panel’ and substituted a ‘flat’ version instead.

[GarryP]

2 hours ago, Ash Eldritch said:

Though I think it would look even better if "Sucker Punch" were done in a 1930s Movie influenced font.

I agree that a better font would have been an improvement but I got tired of trying different ones and went with something that looked okay.

If this was for a real product then you’re absolutely right that a better choice should have been made, probably by someone who understands typeface choice better than me.

[Ash Eldritch]

@GarryP That's fair enough. Typography is indeed an art unto itself. It's something I've always admired but certainly don't have the ability to create anything special.

[peter]

On 5/31/2024 at 10:37 AM, Ash Eldritch said:

@GarryP That's fair enough. Typography is indeed an art unto itself. It's something I've always admired but certainly don't have the ability to create anything special.

Words and numbers are visual too. 

You can do it, just Google art deco book and film covers, railway posters and even art deco fonts. Select the ones you like then replace them in place, using the colours that just look right.

Have a look at this thread, from way back...

 

[Ash Eldritch]

@peter Just because you're a talented chef it doesn't automatically make you a talented pâtissier.

[Alfred]

@Ash Eldritch Just because you can apply weird formatting to text here doesn't mean you should extend it to punctuation and trailing spaces! 

[Ash Eldritch]

@Alfred I couldn't for the life of me remember how to do the circumflex on Mac so copied. I'm assuming the Noir plugin for Safari did something odd. Which also meant I couldn't see it once posted. That and perhaps I should have remembered to paste and match style. But hey, a case in point perhaps. 😂

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, Ash Eldritch said:

I couldn't for the life of me remember how to do the circumflex on Mac

It’s the same as on iPad, isn’t it? If I press and hold the a key on the onscreen keyboard here, I get a popup thingy allowing me to choose an ‘a’ with one of various diacritics (and there’s an æ on offer, too).

1 hour ago, Ash Eldritch said:

@peter Just because you're a talented chef it doesn't automatically make you a talented pâtissier. 

Silently editing out the rogue formatting in your previous post is definitely cheating! 

[sansnom]

Hi, I really like the dynamics of this illustration which I find very successful. On the cover, the overall purple outline decorated with these little white bubbles is an interesting graphic idea that I think should be developed, as it is so special.

I took the liberty of reinforcing the general contrast (with a darker base) in order to bring more light to the whole... Below, a very rough montage, just for form's sake. 😉

[Ash Eldritch]

@Alfred Ah-ha! Now that I did not know. Far easier than the old system I can never remember. Cheers.

[GarryP]

Thanks @sansnom

The purple outline and little white bubbles were supposed to represent a (stylised) engine gasket.

If I was going to take the idea further the plan was to use differently-sized circles on the ‘gasket’ to make it a bit more visually interesting but I didn't bother when other parts of the design weren't working out.

Your mock-up is much better than the horribly-crude attempt that I made earlier – my heart just wasn’t in it at the end.

I would have liked to take this design a bit further – and move on to the other books – but my ideas were way too ambitious and many hours of trying to create vector outlines from photos, and coming up with very sub-par results, just ground me down. (My original idea for this book was for the main part of the design to be the silhouette of a girl wearing a driving cap and goggles where the lower part would be a view down a city street with a car racing towards the viewer, maybe turned to the side a bit, while another car was racing behind it with baddies firing guns from the windows. Or something like that. Way too ambitious.)

I know I could probably have used a vectorisation service in some way but I hoped to learn how to do it myself. Maybe another time.

[sansnom]

@GarryP, je n'y connais rien en mécanique. Vous faites référence à un joint de culasse. Je viens de faire une recherche sur Google et je trouve que graphiquement, encore une fois, vous avez une idée excellente, mais il faudrait la développer. Pour votre couverture actuelle, grossir les trous blancs d'un facteur de 3, réduire leur nombre et les disposer de manière symétrique… afin, c'est ce qui me vient à l'idée.

[GarryP]

That’s the sort of thing I was looking to do, and I had a few ideas for it, but I never got round to it as the main part of the design wasn’t really what I wanted. My enthusiasm had gone by then.

Basically I didn’t want to waste time on the sideshow when the main event was a washout.

[Twolane]

@GarryP I thought your first iteration was pretty darned good, GarryP. You have no complaints from me. I only wish I had the patience. Don't desert the ship.

[GarryP]

Thanks  @Twolane

I thought it was good enough to give it a public outing, in case it gave someone else some ideas for their own stuff, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted to create.

I don’t have much time for experimentation at the moment but I might come back to it at some point (maybe it gets a ‘re-print’).

[sansnom]

Sorry, my previous post remained in French…

@GarryP, I don't know anything about mechanics. You are referring to a head gasket. I just did a Google search and I found that graphically, once again, you have an excellent idea, but it needs to be developed. For your current coverage, magnify the white holes by a factor of 3, reduce their number and arrange them symmetrically...so that's what comes to mind.

[William Overington]

Other princesses with four cylinders from the 1930s.

LMS Princess Royal Class - Wikipedia

William

 

[peter]

On 6/17/2024 at 6:21 AM, Ash Eldritch said:

@peter Just because you're a talented chef it doesn't automatically make you a talented pâtissier.

As, indeed, there's always new stuff to learn.

[DelN]

Nice book cover design! Very striking colours...