“Ghost Of A Dog” – Is a short story written by yours truly. I wrote the piece a couple of years ago while reminiscing of one of my family dogs from when I was a child. I refined the story a bit this past winter when I started a personal blog as I thought it would make a nice story to share. Here is the link and I encourage you to read the story as I believe it conveys quite nicely with the imagery of this book cover design.
Typography – I chose Clarendon light to set the title. Initially I chose Clarendon Bold but thought it made the presence of the title too over powering. I also chose to emphasize the words ghost and dog by setting them in all caps and setting everything else in lower case, including the author’s name.
Imagery and Color -The story describes a Summer evening so I chose that as the setting for my illustration. I used deep dark blue for the sky, a gradient consisting of dark green and dark, almost black, plum to add some depth to the background trees. I used the same dark plum color graduating to a lighter shade to convey the ground as it transitions from background to foreground. I used additional gradients to create the illusions of shadow and light. The image conveys one of calm solitude except for the glow emanating from within the dog house. Again, read the story to get the rest of the picture. Actually the goal of the imagery is to compel viewers to want read the story so I hope I have achieved that aim.
Well, that’s it for today and that is it for the Book Cover Design Project. Tomorrow I will move on to another series. I am thinking of calling it Brand, Re-brand. The goal would be to design logos for fictitious products or organizations, or to create redesigns for existing ones. What do you think? Sound fun?
Participate: I am always accepting ideas from readers. Currently I would like to hear ideas on the next design project theme. The Book Cover Design Project ends on June 30th so if you have ideas on the next theme please let me know. Help me promote this site! If you are on Facebook please add Circadian Creative’s Facebook page to your “liked” pages. If you log into Facebook and do a search on Circadian Creative it will come up at the top of the list. I update the page daily after each post here and I have also archived the daily designs by month in the photo section.
See you all tomorrow.
Sean
Circadian Creative 
When I opened this and saw the moon beaming down on the doghouse and then the light shining out of the door, I almost cried. It’s really good. And if people read the story with it, they will feel the impact of the image. I also really like the moon for some reason, and the way you typed the headline.
I really like this cover, especially having read the story — they fit together perfectly. The light coming out of the dog house is very telling. Very special!
Thank you both for the comments. I am glad you enjoy both the story and the illustration.
I too enjoyed this one…I feel like Duke,or his ghost, is going to come through the door any minute!!
i like this one but i can’t see a ghost… spooky???