Changes, the first novel in the Family Portrait series was born on August 12, 2013. As I tried to find my brand, the covers have gone through a lot of changes so to speak. Here they are.
The first one I felt was too dark, that cover was released for less than a month. It was supposed to be a shattered picture frame which represents the lives of the characters. Hence the name Changes.
The 2nd was a mock I had done for the designer. I wanted to focus on Adriana finding the picture of Haze, which is a key storyline in the series. Haze was her mystery man that he was hell bent on finding.
The 3rd was the finished product of the 2nd. The designer did such a great job, he added a wooden background because the Banovics inherited a winery and the wood represented the wine barrels.
The 4th one I designed myself. I had changed the synopsis with the 3rd design to feature Adriana and Leighann storylines. As the books grew in popularity, I started thinking about branding and felt that the cover no longer represented the synopsis. People seemed to relate more to the new synopsis. I wanted a clean design, I love the use of silhouettes because the characters themselves are a mystery. Read more about the newest cover design here.
The Banovic Siblings, 2nd in the series also underwent some changes. The first cover was released with the book on December 3, 2013.
My sister came up with the design for the first cover. I loved it! The idea was to have a few classic lines of the book on the cover. The book is known for that cover.
With the 2nd cover I wanted to feature the siblings, the stance of the silhouettes shows the personality of each sibling.
I liked the 2nd one but with the 3rd I was thinking about branding, so I took the images from the 2nd design and incorporated it into the style of the newest Changes cover.
Bastard’s Brew, released on April 12. Had the least amount of changes. All the branded covers were designed together, so going forth, all the covers under the Family Portrait brand will be much easier to design, because the template is in place.
The first cover picture of the clouds in the back I took while I was hiking with my dumb phone. I don’t really know what made me take that photo and I had no intention of using it for anything except to say “OMG like at the weather coming my way”. Because Bastard’s Brew was so dark, the darkest of all the novels in the series so far, it felt it fitting to use the clouds that was brewing up some bad weather. Of course the 2nd cover matched all those in the series. To read more about how I came about the first cover for Bastard’s Brew click on the link.
There you have it. The many faces of Family Portrait.
Cheers!
Gillian
