• A$465

• 38 Designs

• 18 Designer

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Buchumschlag Design Kurzbeschreibung

Design an eye-catching ebook cover for a novel about making it in rock music, which is targeted primarily at the College market (readers aged 18-28 years of age).

This is a buddy story between a washed-up singer/guitarist/songwriter (indie rock) in his early thirties who is forced to take a job teaching music in a juvenile prison in Sydney, Australia. Which is where he discovers a talented 16-year-old Aboriginal singer/guitarist who wants to learn how to write a song.

The overall tone of the novel is humorous, ironic and light-hearted, even though the central relationship is fraught with difficulties over white-black cultural differences. Ultimately their friendship wins out.

At the climax of the story, the washed-up muso helps launch the teenager's career via a televised performance in front of a huge live audience at a festival.

The story is set in the 1990s but there doesn't need to be anything to specifically reference this era. Also, please do not include any Sydney icons like the Harbour Bridge or Opera House to locate the story. The story aims to be universal.

If you would like to see the existing cover for this book, go to euanmitchell.com and click on the Fiction page, then scroll down to Making Noises.

You will see the buddy relationship is neatly symbolised by a black-white fist clunk, but this doesn't have to be so prominent or close-up. I would like the imagery to be more obviously about performing music while still retaining a symbol of the buddy relationship at the centre of the story like the fists (even if more of each arm is visible).

Other info/images that might be useful: the teenager owns a red electric Fender guitar; the standard microphone for singers is a Shure SM58; there could be imagery of a live concert crowd; a suggestion of a prison wall or cell; or none of these things if you have better ideas.

The use of bold, dynamic colors on the existing cover helps give it a suitable look for readers in the College market, but I can't help wondering if the color scheme might be better if it tried a little less hard. For example, would a predominance of colors like red, blue and black on a white background give a better and cooler color scheme?

Then again, sticking with no white space might better help immerse the reader in the world of the story. I am open to more than one option from each designer who submits their ebook cover. Just don't think the cover has to be as saturated with color as the existing one is.

The choice of font or fonts for the Title (Making Noises) and Author Name (Euan Mitchell) is absolutely crucial. If I wanted to settle for any old free fonts, I could post this job to fiverr.com or similar places. However, I would like a really tasteful selection of font/s that look slick and professional and suit the genre of a rock music novel.

Also, the reader should be able to see exactly what the title and author name are at a glance without any ambiguity. So overly stressed or complicated fonts are out.

Don't worry about including a strap line for the moment (the existing one is "making it in music takes real commitment") because I might omit, change or insert the strap line depending on the cover that impresses me the most. (If there is room for a strap line, fine, but if a particularly eye-catching design leaves no room for a strap line, that's okay too.)

I expect to be able to ask for 2-3 minor revisions of the winning submission, which are most likely to be related to sizing and/or placement of elements.

In practical terms I would eventually like the winning ebook cover at 300 ppi, 2500 pixels high x 1563 pixels wide, and in both RGB and CMYK, but your initial submission/s don't have to match these specs.

Of course, the images and fonts used MUST be copyright cleared, meaning their use is legal and NO royalties will ever be payable on them beyond my one-off fee that is paid to the winning designer. The designer and the source of their images will be credited on the imprint page of the ebook. These are my non-negotiable conditions for entering this particular design contest. If you don't agree with these conditions, then please do not submit your work. I will ask the winning designer to guarantee me in writing that their ebook cover meets these copyright conditions before releasing the winning design fee.

If the above details don't give you enough clues as to what I'm looking for, then perhaps I can sum up by saying I hope you can design me an ebook cover for a rock music novel with a genuine "Wow!" factor that will stand out in the Kindle or iBookstore, for the right reasons, and entice the reader to try the free sample.

If you give this contest a go, then thank you and good luck,
Best regards
Euan Mitchell

Industrie/Einheitstyp

Graphic Design