Repeating Myself(Repeating Myself)

I want to keep my design new and novel as I move to different book projects. I'm almost always working with a new Author on each book, and they probably aren't all that aware of other books from the same publisher (much less books I've worked on), so it isn't as though anyone might notice — apart from the publisher, and I think he's just pleased when everything looks good, and is published on time, with a minimum of friction — but still, I think the result is better and more interesting work (if only to me).

That said, though, there are shortcuts and familiar methods I will occasionally fall back on. I got kinda stuck on a particular typeface, recently. At least, it looks that way...




(That's Egiziano Classic Black, for those of you keeping score at home.)

In fact, I just happened to be working on a series of book projects, one after the other after the other, and this just seemed the best-suited type for the design I had in mind. (And then, one more time, because I just liked the shape of the letterforms.)

I almost used it again, this time for the second in a series of similarly-themed script books, but I didn't like the shape of the letterforms (they just didn't seem to work for that title) and I chose something else, instead — though it was certainly similar.


Of course, that cover might also seem somewhat familiar...


In this instance, I had a file already set up for the effect I wanted, and it worked well with what I was trying to get at — why not use it again? I did try various ideas to disguise the similarity, but when all was said and done I decided that, since these are completely different books for a (mostly) completely different audience, I shouldn't lose too much sleep over it. So I just made it darker, a bit more subtle.

And here's this, only because I finished working on it last night...


This time, the type is tilted not only for effect (you might have noticed that's a "familiar method" I occasionally rely on), but because this cover design is type-driven (rather than built around a large, full-cover image), and the word "Westerners" in the title was unusually long, I wanted to find a way to use the title at a large size, despite the narrow width.


...As it happens, the color scheme was taken largely from yet another Western-themed cover I had recently done, drawn from the subtle tones of that beautiful color photo. (But no big ol' slab serif.)