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Allon - Book Covers

Art Direction, Illustration, Packaging

Allon - Book Covers
For the Young Adult Fantasy Series by Shawn Lamb
Shawn and I love old books. When planning the cover themes for Shawn's YA series, Allon, we decided to steer away from the common fantasy paintings on most novels. Instead, I designed each book cover to look like an old leather-bound, gold-guilded, embossed book. For the leather texture, I scanned the back of an old Bible I have. I changed the color of the leather for each volume in the series. The typeface is KellsFLF, an uncial font. The books are 6 x 9 inches. Inside the body text, I used old printer ornaments to end each chapter. Five of the books have been published with a 6th coming out later this year. You can read excerpts of each book on our Allon Books website.

www.allonbooks.com
Allon - Book 1 has worn corners and a crest scratched out which is a story point. To get the scratches, I took an gray faux leather appointment book and had Shawn gouge it with a knife. I scanned the scratches and blended with the crest and the leather cover in Photoshop.
Allon - Book 2 - Insurrection takes place in winter so I went for a blue-gray color with bare tree outlines in the background and snowflake ornaments in the corners. The medallion in the center was created from 3 pieces: a celtic raven, a celtic knotted 8 point star, and a black textured 8 point star base. Shawn didn't like the lower case b in KellsFLF so I used Garamond.
For Allon - Book 3 - Heir Apparent, I modified some old Victorian printers ornaments for the corners and bracketing the title. I didn't like the capital H in KellsFLF so I modified it in Illustrator.
Allon - Book 4 - A Question of Sovereignty features a thin celtic border, embossed printers ornaments in the corners, and an eagle crest in the center. The crest is in our dining room.
Allon - Book 5 - Gauntlet is my favorite cover so far. The embossing of the thick celtic border worked very well except for the title area. After different trials I decided to cut the border at the title for the front cover. The back cover has the full border intact. I found a tutorial on how to make gold metallic text with layer effects in Photoshop. I'm very pleased with the results. I created the eagle/crown medallion from a sketch by my daughter, Briana Lamb, in Illustrator. Then I applied similar layer effects in Photoshop to create the gold embossing.