New Twilight Book? Cover Reveal for George R. R. Martin’ Winds of Winter?

… unfortunately only a click bait title ;). This is just a quick post about a little project I did for fun.

While preparing the post about covers for book series I was wondering if I can replicate the look to fake a new book cover in the series. I managed to create two: “Moonlight” cover for the Twilight Saga, and “Winds of Winter” cover for A Song of Ice and Fire.

Moonlight – Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

This was my analysis of the Twilight’s covers:

twilightsaga

Common:

  • colors – black background, white fonts, image with red accents;
  • fonts – including a very distinctive, iconic font for the title;
  • layout – author’s name on the bottom, title at the top, image in the middle;
  • aesthetics – minimalistic, subtle, elegant.

Distinguishing:

  • image – different photos, suitable for the novel’s story;
  • title placement – subtle variations, to make it work better with the cover’s image.

Using this knowledge, I managed to create this cover:

moonlight twilight saga cover

My main goal was to keep the minimalistic, subtle and elegant character of the Twilight covers.

The whole design follows the original covers layout. As you can see, I used a black background, white fonts and image with red accents. I used a Zephyr font for the title, BankGothic for the author’s name and Myriad Pro for the subtitle, and for the picture I chose this photo of the spilling wine.

Winds of Winter – A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

This was my analysis of the A Song of Ice and Fire‘s covers:

songicefire

Common:

  • fonts – the same for the author’s name and the title;
  • layout – author’s name on the bottom, title at the top, object in the middle;
  • aesthetics – minimalistic, presenting only one object as a cover’s graphic element.

Distinguishing:

  • image – different objects, relevant to the novel’s story;
  • colors –  unique, prominent color for the background,  small variation in the colors of the fonts.

Using this knowledge, I managed to create this cover:

A-DANCE-WITH-DRAGONS-by-george-rr-martin-adoi

I had some problems with the implementation of this cover. Firstly, I do not know exactly what font was used. Thanks to this site, I found a few free fonts that were sufficiently similar. I decided to use the font OptiBauer for the title and author’s name, and Garamond for the top line of text. I added subtle text effects and light shade.
I also struggled with choosing the appropriate graphics – I did not want to repeat a theme already present (eg. weapon or helmet), but I wanted to use a metal object like the original books covers had. In the end, I chose the door knocker in the shape of a lion’s head, referring to the theme of the gate and the novels’s important Lannister family. I photoshopped the image, aging the knocker and giving a lion a more menacing look. The last thing was to put everything on a background in royal purple color.

And that would be that!

twilightgamethrones