Nonfiction

A major work of nonfiction for which I was privileged to design the cover. The publishing company was Abingdon Press of Nashville Tennessee. This is a new edition of an already existing book. At the time, I felt lucky to have been in the position to re-design the cover of a book that I was assigned to read in college, several years earlier!

Here's an example where the author wanted to express his own thoughts about religion and Christianity, while quoting various scholars from throughout past history. The huge clouds and atmospheric colors help denote a feeling of grandeur and overwhelming mystery.

The color scheme on this cover helps to show depth. Note the deep blues of the sky seem to recede, while the warm colors of the foreground seem to come forward. So the viewer can seemingly see for miles and miles. But as usual for a book cover, it's all an illusion!

In this example, Photoshop was used to combine two separate photos to create one nature scene. As it happened, we were lucky that the top bright part of the picture corresponded to the word "Hope," and the bottom dark part related to the words "Hard Times." That is what I would call a happy accident!

Six separate photos were combined in Photoshop to create this digital illustration—The two separate characters, the Bible, the table, the candle and the background texture.

Popular author Bob Goshen has created a self-help book which is valuable to us. The maze idea helps to reinforce the dilemma which we face, which is addressed by the bold statement in the title and subtitle.

Who doesn't love dogs? I found this photo which seemed to capture the love between dog and human, which many people can happily relate to. I combined it with some sky and clouds which put a nice summery effect on the scene.

From the Christian Living genre, targeting the Young Adult market. The pose, the sunglasses and the monochrome color scheme help to achieve a young adult look.

Adding the beauty of the sunset and a quiet peaceful suburban atmosphere to an interesting and sometimes touchy subject - What are the psychological boundaries that we should set around others and around ourselves?

Another colorful book cover for popular author Brenda Murphy. Note we used the same font for both books by Brenda Murphy. This helps create branding, used by superstar authors such as Danielle Steele or John Grisham.

The cartoon figures in this cover help to create a lightness of spirit. Attention is drawn to the subject matter at hand—Listening to someone but constantly interrupting, which in actual point of fact is quite rude.

"Visions of the Heart" is a book of poetry.

Distressed and eroded fonts can be effective tools to help create certain moods.

Using cartoon-style drawings and a bright color scheme helped create attention and draw interest to an otherwise intellectual subject matter.

This is a perennial best-seller, with over 12 million copies sold. My publishing company at the time had purchased the rights to the reprint, so I was lucky that I had the privilege of being assigned to design the cover. Since then, design trends have changed, so for the purposes of this portfolio, I am updating my own design, as shown here.

Nathan Greene of Eau Claire Michigan is the talented artist who rendered the wonderful illustration for this book cover, which was oil on canvas. This illustration was commissioned specifically for this book cover, and Nathan Greene did a fantastic job.

Dan Foote is the talented artist who created this wonderful illustration: A water color painting on paper. We commissioned this cartoon specifically for this book cover, and Dan Foote did a fantastic job!

This is a coffee table book. The railroad scene was created by photographing various individual pictures, including the automobiles and the station, and then combining them into one large panorama. The train engine is currently being restored to run and operate near Nashville Tennessee.

One day I asked myself, "What would it look like if I were asked to create a book cover depicting the genius Albert Einstein?" So I imagined his mind thinking about the equations that were shown in his books. (Most of which I do not understand!)

The author was looking for something light-hearted and colorful. Whimsy is not always easy to achieve on a book cover, but we were pleased with the way this turned out.

Timothy R. Botts is the wonderful calligrapher who rendered this beautiful bit of calligraphy. Tim is the author of many gorgeous books of calligraphy, and I was pleased to work under him at Tyndale House Publishers in Wheaton, Illinois.

In this example, the author was a little concerned that the cover might be too scary or too evil for his audience. So he shopped it around with several of his friends and associates, and the verdict came back that yes this was the book cover design that he wanted. After publication, the feedback so far has been very complimentary that this is an effective book cover for him.

Another non-fiction book cover example, political style. Politics can be an explosive and volatile subject matter these days. This cover featured bright color and movement, to provide plenty of emotion.

Over the last few decades, the self-help genre has grown immensely to fill a special need in people. Previously with white backgrounds, the self-help covers today are getting more colorful. The color scheme in this cover features a gradient in the sky which repeats several of the colors in the foreground. This serves to unify the design into a pleasing composition.