Lee will present the illustration to Elliott and Heather. While working through any small requested changes, they’ll contemplate type and line design of the book. Type, design, focus, the spine, and readability on the web will all be discussed.

Panel: Elliott Kay, Lee Moyer, Heather McDougal

This was largely a visual sessions, with lots of images projected, so my notes are sparse as you really need to see what they were referring to in order to understand the context. Also, I won’t repeat points that were made during the first session in this series.

“Everyone is an Art Director … and very few are qualified.”
“Covers are iconography, not just illustration.”
How can you tell when something is self-published?

cover image is clearly a stock photograph
reliance on basic fonts like Helvetica
the cover doesn’t use fonts that reflect the content or tone of the book


don’t use crazy fonts or wild special effects with the fonts