Took me some time to figure out what I was looking at… a dead gull on a beach.
The idea is good but it’s not easy to decipher. This could be a great cover. The dead gull just needs to look “deader” and the sand needs to look more like sand.
And please get rid of this black border around the title and make it bigger?
Curiously, the designer’s other work, as glimpsed on his [nasty, flash-based] website, seems to be entirely competent, so I’ve no idea what caused this one to go so terribly wrong.
I have a suspicion that this was an initial layout proof, hence the random mark of name on the side. Then the author didn’t pay for the rest and yoinked it.
![cover[1]](https://lousybookcovers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cover176.jpg)
Took me some time to figure out what I was looking at… a dead gull on a beach.
The idea is good but it’s not easy to decipher. This could be a great cover. The dead gull just needs to look “deader” and the sand needs to look more like sand.
And please get rid of this black border around the title and make it bigger?
And get rid of the shiny reflective thing that obscures the author’s name. Harf? Harl? Hart?
I was mesmerized by the dead gull and didn’t notice. Now it’s all I can see. Thanks. A lot. lol
Sorry, no, it’s a deformed seagull flying into an ectoplasmic Alfred Hitchcock silhouette.
But thank heavens that bird doesn’t have hands. Because unlike wings, hands are *really* hard to draw.
OMG lol Another thing I can’t unsee now!
You’re welcome 🙂
Curiously, the designer’s other work, as glimpsed on his [nasty, flash-based] website, seems to be entirely competent, so I’ve no idea what caused this one to go so terribly wrong.
I have a suspicion that this was an initial layout proof, hence the random mark of name on the side. Then the author didn’t pay for the rest and yoinked it.
Ha.
Yes! That’s what I saw! It looked like some kind of blobbish thing swallowing the bird.
I don’t think of one bird as a flock, but if it really LOOKED like a dead bird on a beach, I could buy it. This way? Nope.
The first sign that something is going wrong is when the designer makes sure their credit appears on the cover.