The Hidden Brain

The first book in my new middle grade series is out on Amazon! You can get it right HERE.

I’m proud of this one - it’s much different than Havertail, the other middle grade book I published (working on the second one now!). In the last few years I’ve been drawn to mysteries and crime novels and I wanted to see if I could combine the structure of a mystery novel with the pulpier stuff I tend to like, especially when it comes to middle grade books.

When I was thinking about the cover, I wanted something that looked like it was designed “on purpose”, if that makes sense.

Originally, the logo for the title looked like this:

Which is okay! But I wanted to try something a little bolder and would challenge my own design capabilities. The idea of the title squeezing into the shape of a brain came to mind and I thought I’d try that. So I did a google search of a brain and threw that into Procreate, the iPad app I use to do all my design and art stuff. For the cover I thought it would be cool to have the background of the whole thing look like notepad paper, so I took a piece of yellow legal pad paper, scanned it, and used that as my background. All over the cover I wanted doodles - doodles I thought a kid might make if they were writing down clues and recording evidence in a notebook. All of that resulted in the cover!

I think it looks pretty good, and as long as I’m making the covers myself (something I’d love to pay someone else to do, eventually) I think this makes for a pretty good template for further books. A title design that fits the shape of something to do with the plot and doodles from elements of the book. Each one can have its own color scheme, too.

Anyway, that was my cover process!