It's a lot easier to design a cover when the common elements are already designed, such as the author font and the series name. This cover practically made itself, because the pivotal moment in the story was so clear and even the setting was set.
3D characters pose against a gradient background. The telephone icons are a pun on ‘call’ in the title.
We brightened the light on the characters, and the text colors come from there. We tidied the telephone icons.
We decided it was more important to have larger characters than to have good resolution.
We did it again! The title is smaller so we made it pop. The letters are so fat and shiny they look like licorice.
Inspired by the dramatic title font, we made the icons pop as well.
Lots of changes. Genuine Australian army camouflage on text.
Australian army camouflage is too effective! Outline is darker again..
Experimenting with text outlines and colors.
Newly lit character and our very own Sheila Strine camouflage pattern.
Giving up for good our plan to use our trademark yellow on the author name.
And here is the final! We found we needed to beef up the outlines to make them noticeable.
The only other difference you will see is that the colors are in the limited CMYK range which printers use.