One Vancouver summer’s afternoon, Tim and I met Silmara, our photographer and book cover designer, in Kitsilano (Don’t you like the sound of that name? So soft but firm, nearly romantic.)
We were to take some benching pictures overlooking the water for the book cover, to illustrate Tim and I, sitting in Vancouver in this life, looking ahead, through time, into New York City in the 20’s.
That was a relaxing afternoon. Silmara was working at her own pacing, directing and instructing us occasionally. At the same time, Tim and I had our conversations going on sitting on two different benches without being interrupted by Silmara’s work.
Silmara is the owner of The Orange Lamp studio in Kitsilano. We trusted her. Even though the original idea was mine, we had no idea what the final look of the book cover would be. But I could feel the excitement knowing Silmara was going to do the work.
A few weeks later, Silmara delivered three versions.
I liked them all for different reasons. Hard to decide, I put all three cover designs to my FaceBook page asking for opinions. And people say:
Through the covers we can almost read the book.. Great feeling I got from it.
Thank you for sharing yourself with the world my friend.
Despite the third also being great, I feel that the first is “closer” to the story.
Aesthetically the 3rd option pulls my attention more readily. The 1st is more subtle yet feels like you’re stepping into a private moment. Exciting times Kemila.
I am drawn to the third one (post cards).
Sitting with the designed covers for a couple of weeks, I knew I wanted something closer to the content to represent the book. And I knew Silmara hadn’t had the chance to read the book.
So we had another meeting with Silmara. Tim came up with the idea of ocean background, as in one of Carol’s lives, Sijo is living in a pristine ocean island. Tim sent an ocean picture that he took when we were visiting Oregon coast last summer.
And Silmara turned it into a beautiful cover background. Voila, our final cover was born. Even though Silmara went further designed another almost abstract version of the ocean bubbles, the moment I saw them coming into my email inbox, I knew which one I was going to take.
Now what do you think?
