Book Cover Process Breakdown - "The Frost Fair" 📚✨

Hello Patrons! 🤍

I wanted to show you the process of how I worked on the cover for “The Frost Fair.” ❄️ This is the first time I worked on a middle-grade book cover so it was very exciting for me! 🎉

When I was first contacted for this job, the designer reached out to me letting me know how the team at HarperCollins wanted to incorporate whimsical elements to the cover! They created a board of samples of work I have done. They really liked Daydream and Caspian Blue and wanted to see if I can create something along the lines of the ordinary to fantastical! ✨

They also sent a manuscript and description of the characters so I have a better understanding of how they want to envision their story!

After reading the manuscript, I decided to sketch the two main characters' centre and forward and incorporate the setting in the background.

These sketches are to show different composition ideas making sure there’s enough room for the title and author’s name.

Sketches 2 & 3, show a very faint Father Winter in the background. He’s the antagonist of the story so I wanted to show a bit of mystery. I had this idea of blending him in the sky so it’s not super obvious unless you take a closer look.

After sending the rough sketches to the team, they decided to go with Sketch #3! So I went ahead and gave three different colour palette iterations. Since the story takes place in winter, I wanted to stick to a cooler palette. I added a warmer palette just to show the contrast. I believe at this stage, it’s okay to go crazy with the colours just so we can see the different possibilities. 

After sending those in, they chose the blue palette! I also get a note from the designer that unfortunately, we will have to change the design of Father Winter since there wasn’t enough room for the title since they also had to add “The Miraculous Sweetmakers” to the cover as well. The designer sent the title png so I can figure out a way to incorporate Father Winter on the cover! ❄️

So I came up with three designs to show Father Winter in a very subtle way. The first sketch shows a mysterious figure in the background with frosty swirls around him. The second sketch shows a swirl that transforms into a side profile of Father Winter in the Sky.

For the third sketch, I took a conventional approach by adding Father Winter to the borders. In this border, there are two profiles of him because, in the story, we see two different versions of him!

After hearing feedback, the team was thrilled with the cover with the border so I got approved to render the final cover! 🎉

When I added the details to the background, I wanted to make sure the characters are the main focus of the cover so I chose a very limited palette to paint the background. So even though, there are a lot of small details in the background (snowflakes, people, and lights) the limited colour palette prevents it from overpowering the characters.

Once I sent the final to the designer. They suggested adding more flares and swirls to make it feel more magical. I also had to make adjustments to their faces by adding more highlights to their face and eyes.

I really like this suggestion since it makes the colours pop even more! A few subtle adjustments can make such a huge difference!

Here’s what the final cover looks like! I had to darken Anne’s hair (right character) a bit more and overall add more contrast to both characters!

Afterthought

Overall, I really enjoyed working on this book cover! Since this was my first experience, it was interesting to figure out the stages of creating a cover from start to finish. 🥰 What I really love about this experience is the creative freedom. Although there were guidelines on what to add, I was very fortunate to work with a team where that allowed me to create different sketches and ideas.

In the future, I want to work on providing more different compositions! I think the sketches I provided look very similar to each other so I want to improve on giving variations to the sketches!

Questions for you!

Let me know if you have any questions about the process of creating this cover and if you like these types of posts! I am thinking of sharing more behind the scenes from client work but only of course if I get the green light to do so haha! Let me know if you would like to see more posts like this (ie. working with an agent, working on publishing, etc) 🥰✨

Have an amazing day! 🤍🥰

Love always, 

Maxine