I try to make the process as collaborative as possible. I love working back and forth with clients to make sure their vision gets across with the cover. Because of this. I don’t put a cap on revisions, I’ll work with you until we get it 100% nailed down.

The first stage is all about initially learning more about your characters and overall vision for the cover. It’s totally okay if you are unsure about what look you want for your cover at this point or to feel a bit “all over the place” with visuals you are drawn towards. This process helps us both to nail down a direction and vision for the cover.

1. The first step includes a comprehensive project questionnaire that asks a bit of information about your characters / any defining features you would like to see included with them, color preferences, and any other visual direction. You can be as detailed as you’d like in this questionnaire. I love that!

2. If you have a synopsis of your book, I would love to read through that. If you’re comfortable with it, I would even love to read your book whenever it is ready to help guide the art. But if not, a good synopsis along with the character descriptions and a bit about their personality would work as well.

3. I would also have you do a bit of Pinterest research and put together a Pinterest board with illustration styles, fonts and colors that stand out to you.

The Pinterest board gives me a good baseline for what you are drawn towards visually. I don’t want you to worry about being concise of everything “matching” at this stage. Literally include anything that catches your eye. From there, we can dig into what you like / dislike about these images and further hone in on what will work best for you cover.

Based on your client homework, I would put together a mood board that curates some of the images from your Pinterest board into a cohesive look. This will help to direct us for the rough drafts and make sure we are both on the same page for the direction you are looking for.

Along with the mood board, I will also send one more shorter questionnaire asking questions about what stands out to you from your inspiration images so that I can better gain an idea for what stands out to you visually as well as what you don’t prefer visually.

After the mood board and general style direction is approved, I then can create two initial rough concepts for comparison.

1. I provide unlimited revisions on whatever direction we decide to go with from the rough sketches.

2. The revision process includes any changes on the illustration artwork + typography design for any copy on the cover.

3. Once the ebook / front cover is designed, we can then move onto the full print cover design.