Making a Book Cover

So last week started out like every other week with just spreadsheets and manuscripts. I'm starting to think I can do my work in my sleep, and sometimes when I forget to have my tea in the morning, I pretty much am.

My supervisor feels terrible (such a sweet man!) that this is all I do and sometimes stands up for me and pesters people for jobs for me when I have tried to pester them and fail. Well, this time it paid off. I like working with Inka, who is the in-house typesetter and designer because her work, besides actual editing is the stuff I'm most interested in. So, thursday she comes up to me and explains they need a book cover designed by that night. She then asks me to do it. ALL BY MYSELF! I thought this was a huge honor, for them to trust me with a book cover when I have no experience or anything.

It wasn't exactly from scratch, the book is a guide for finding volunteer work abroad and they had already come out with a previous edition. They decided they hated their previous cover and wanted a whole fresh new look that didn't look so much like a text book. They also wanted a collage of images to make it more interesting and as with all non profits to have their logo on it in the exact dimensions, colors, etc. that they had indicated. They even had a specific font I needed to use for the title! It didn't help that their logo was cherry red and puke green (soooo hideous!) or that Inka informed me that we could only afford to buy one image, but still had to try for the collage effect.

It took a couple drafts and about an hour looking for "volunteer-y" pictures on image databases on the net, but I came up with three different designs and one was chosen by my superiors and sent directly to the authors and organization for approval. If it is accepted, it will actually be published! This piece will probably be the highlight of my portfolio for a long time! I knew there was a reason I took this internship, I've been on cloud nine ever since, even though I've had to read about 50 (not an exaggeration) short pieces on giving birth (we are coming out with a collected short story book about babies).

cheers!