Crayola Markers, Three Coffee Cups, and a Prayer

Nothing satisfies the creative drive for an author more than seeing that first book reach print. The only thing that could top it is seeing your own artwork on the front cover of that book. Seeing your artwork grace the cover of a book you wrote is a fantastic experience, indeed. Kelly and I are lucky to say that we have had this experience. For those budding graphic artists out there, we thought a small article on how we designed ours would be both inspirational and informative.

Don't tell our publisher.

Brainstorm an idea. No one knows what artwork can speak for your story better than you, the author. Kelly and I thought a coffee cup on the front cover would be a cool acknowledgment of the fact that we met in a coffee shop after first emailing each other online. What if steam rising from the coffee cup formed the shape of a heart, to represent our love story? An idea was formed.

Our publisher permitted author artwork submissions, so we decided to go for it. We never thought we would be offered a book contract, let alone the chance to design its art, so why not reach even higher? That's how we operate: we try everything because have no idea what we can't do. But, we only had a week to submit our final manuscript draft and artwork. No problem.

Gather the materials. Here is, as far as I can tell, the complete required list of materials to start your own art design department. For the We Met at Starbucks book cover project, I gathered or purchased the following items:

• Five-dollar coffee cup from Target
• Thirty-dollar coffee cup from Williams Sonoma
• Drawing pad from Office Max
• Box of Crayola Markers from Office Max
• Digital camera
• Flatbed scanner
• Old computer from the basement
• Full spectrum lamp from the reading nook
• Pencil
• One Cat

Develop the methods. We felt that a picture of a real object would give the cover art a weighty, three dimensional feel. Thus began the quest for the perfect coffee-cup model. Kelly and I thought we had the perfect cup in that thirty-dollar job from Williams and Sonoma. We bought it at the Denver Cherry Creek Mall on one of our Friday date nights. The clerk at the store thought we were pretty weird to buy just one: "Would you like that gift wrapped?" No thanks.

What you see on the cover of the book is actually a random coffee cup from our cupboard. I placed it on the kitchen floor and snapped its picture with my digital camera after shining light on it from my full-spectrum reading lamp. I figured the more UV energy available, the better. Kelly and I often drink coffee out of those other cups we purchased for no reason. We call them our almost-cover-model cups.

Crayola markers are not water-proof. Just sayin' . . .

Anyway, I drew the heart-shaped steam tendrils on my notepad and filled in the drawing with the black marker. Then, I scanned the drawing on my flatbed scanner. Once that task was complete, I left the drawing sitting on the office floor. Big mistake.

I hauled up my old computer from the basement crawl space, dusted it off, and fired it up. It had an older copy of Adobe Photoshop on it I thought I could use for the digital artwork. Then, my second mistake was to grossly overestimate my skills using Adobe Photoshop. Back into the basement the old computer went.

I ended up using a small, eight-year-old program from Microsoft called Image Composer that only ever shipped, to my knowledge, as a bundle with FrontPage 2000. After stitching the photo together with the scanned heart drawing together and applying some digital art affects, presto-change-o! One hundred variations of awful, awful artwork.

My cat, Kyle, spit up all over my original marker-drawing, where it sat on the floor, and smeared it.

Know inspiration when you see it. After spending a day fussing over my artwork and feeling like an idiot for thinking I had the skills and tools to design a book cover, I finally was willing to admit defeat. Kelly came home one day to find me hunched over my computer desk, head resting on my keyboard, with drool dripping out of the corner of my mouth. Piles and piles of printouts covered the office floor and couch.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"None of these are any good," I whined as I showed her all my rejected designs. "I'll never be able to do this. And Kyle ruined the original drawing!" She patiently looked around the carpet of papers on the office floor, resolutely chose one print, and handed it to me.

"Use this one." "Um . . ."

The rest, as they say, was hysteria.

Submit with confidence. We submitted the drawing along with our final draft of the manuscript by the appointed deadline. We even had the guts to suggest the design for the back cover of the book, too. Both were accepted without comment from the publisher. It pays to take a chance; we do that a lot.

Conclusion: Kelly and I are proud to see our first book in print. Even prouder when we consider we designed our own front cover. I discovered the methods, and Kelly gave me the confidence that they would really work. Together we did it, as a team, breaking as many rules as possible. We are confident that you will be able to design professional looking cover art by following our simple steps!