When it came time to design Memory Lane’s cover, I knew two things.
- I knew I wanted to go with an “illustrated” style. Not only do I personally love this style, but market trends support the popularity of illustrated covers. There are a large number of readers out there who’ve never read my books but might enjoy them if they did. I believed that lots of those readers would be more likely to try Memory Lane if I gave the novel an illustrated cover design.
- I knew who I wanted to hire to design the cover.
Courtney is a terrific author. She also owns and runs a childrens’ theater with her husband. She also happens to be very gifted at cover design. AND she’s one of my closest friends. 🙂 Courtney designed the cover for my Christmas novella You and Me. Collaborating on that cover with her was fun and easy and I was very happy with how it turned out. So asking her to design Memory Lane was a no-brainer.
Courtney will tell you that she’s a designer, but not an illustrator. In other words, she can take elements (photos, illustrations, etc) that someone else has created and then build a cover with those. So my first step was to commission a freelance artist to draw custom illustrations of the hero and heroine of my novel. I gave her information on what they looked like and what type of clothing they’d be likely to wear. I sent this photo along as color pallette inspiration….
The artist came up with the following designs. The heroine is wearing overalls, just like Remy often does in the book! I used the middle one on the cover and made stickers out of the middle one and the one on the right.
My initial vision for the cover was to place the characters ON a lane in order to represent the title Memory Lane. Courtney did just that and gave them an oceanside Maine setting in these mock-ups. (Mock-ups aren’t at all final. They’re quick “rough drafts” used to get a visual sense of what my idea would look like in actuality.)
Once I saw my idea, I realized this wasn’t the direction I wanted to go in, after all. Courtney and I discussed other options. In recent years, there’s been a trend toward making the title itself the star of book covers. She and I are both fans of that trend and wondered if we could make that work here. She showed me the most beautiful teal background with vertical lines running down it, and I was immediately enamored.
At that point, she created this mock-up.
I loved it. But I wondered if it would be possible to see the couple and the boat at the top of the image.
I really loved this version, too. (Those cute clouds!) But after living with both of these for several days, I decided to go with the first version–which was Courtney’s favorite, too. Initially, she’d used the above font for my name because this is the font used for my name on several of my backlist books. At the end of the day, though, it was too skinny to hold its own against such a big, blocky title font. Which is how we arrived at the final version of the cover.
To close, I thought I’d share some of the fun encouragement, graphics, and comments that I’ve received since Memory Lane’s release, a week and a half ago. It’s been a busy, exciting, and wonderful time!
Thank you, readers, for supporting Memory Lane! Do you have any questions/comments about the cover?
Becky Wade
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Well, how cool is that!? Courtney is SO talented in so many ways, but I had no idea cover design was one of them! I shouldn’t have been surprised though. Super cute cover! Not sure I could have even decided between them since they are all adorable! Congrats again on your book, Becky!
Courtney has designed all of her own recent illustrated covers!
Adorable cover! And like Deb, I had no idea Courtney did this. She’s one talented woman. I’m so happy for all your success, Becky. Congrats, friend!
Thanks, Tammy!
How fun to get a glimpse at how this cover came to be, Becky! It is super cute and carries a great color scheme. Congrats on a successful launch!
Thanks! I love how the finished cover turned out. 🙂
Beautiful and well done! Love the color scheme. Congratulations on another great book!
Thank you, Gena!
What a fun blog post. I loved watching the cover come together.
Cover posts are always one of my favorite ones by you each year. It’s so fun to see how they come together. This cover is beautiful—I love the teal background. And even though I prefer “real faces,” this illustrated cover is very nice! I got my preordered copy last week and finished it in quick order. It was so good!I can’t wait to see what book 2 has in store.
Courtney is definitely talented! I just finished her Valentine novella this week as well—so good.
Thanks for reading both my book and Courtney’s! I’m so happy to hear that you enjoyed both. 🙂
It’s such a cute and inviting cover–and really fits the book!
This is so much fun! Always neat to see the direction a design project takes. 🙂
Yep! The design process is a creative one and creativity often takes us down twisting, turning pathways.
I love how the cover came together and agree it’s the perfect design choice. I am partial to teal though 🙂 I look forward to reading this one, congratulations!
Like you, I love teal!!
I love the story of how this cover came to be!
The different designs and font sizes ate fun, and I really like the end result the best, especially that the author name wider looks better in the wider font. I do think it is a refresh!
P.S. Since I grew up in the 1970’s the illustrated covers remind me of that time period….
I agree that the larger font for my author name works best. And yes—this cover was a complete design refresh. 🙂