Finding Your Style in Book Cover Design

I’ve always strived to improve and provide my clients with the best artwork I can create, experimenting with different techniques and approaches along the way. Funny enough, there was a time when I worried I didn’t have a recognizable style — and maybe I still can’t claim that 100%!

Over time, though, my work naturally evolved. By focusing less on “having a style” and more on honing my craft, my covers became more polished and personalized without me even realizing it. That process of experimentation and growth is really what shaped the style I use today.

Often times your style comes from your limitations. Most of my favorite illustrators have a style that's quite different from mine and it's not from lack of trying. When I was starting out I would try to make a design in the style of someone I emulated and found myself unable to achieve it. So much of illustration and design is about problem solving so instead of giving up you have to navigate around it and maybe even embrace it to find success.

For example, I remember trying to do a cover with a city in the background. I love drawing people but I'm bored by pretty much everything else. My brain doesn't have any architectural acumen and eventually I just gave up on that part. I skipped ahead to laying out the text and found that it covered so much of my drawing, making the background almost irrelevant. I didn't want to lose the idea so I experimented with turning the text into the city itself. I've always been more an illustrator than a graphic designer so this felt like a world unfamiliar to me but I loved the outcome I had stumbled upon and found my style continuously moving into designs like these. Some people are maximalist and their art is amazing, but with book covers in particular, we've got so many ideas we have to condense and make apparent at the same time.

When I hit a roadblock with my style not working with the brief or connecting to my initial idea, "simplify" is usually my mantra. I look for ways to shave it down and make it more economical. Style doesn't come easy and often times you have to elbow your way through a lot of designs to reach the final one. That can be intimidating for me because it feels like the illustrations I make during this process are wasted, but just like going to the gym, the exercise creates the effect. Don't be afraid to scrap something so that it can be reborn anew. If you're good, your style never just reaches a set point. It continues to morph as you absorb new passions and experiences. Trust that your style is inherently inside of you always, it just needs the shaping from the expert that is you.

The first and best source of inspiration is the work itself. I love to read the works in their entirety, if possible, and steep myself in the words, characters, and worlds of the book. Often a scene, or simple well written line can set off a whirlwind of ideas.

I love when authors send other imagery that excites them, as that often excites me too and gets us into the world of visual communication. Some authors have gone as far as to create entire mood boards and playlists, which I love! (You know who you are!)

Artists also inevitably bring with them everything else excites them. For me this is other paintings, other stories, music, poignant moments from real life, and more. In my experience the best images come from fusing the author’s world and enthusiasm with my own, and together we pull off something we are both genuinely stoked about.

The starting point is always the story. Then comes the world around me: the September breeze, the open window, the neighbor hanging laundry, the child running along the beach, and the shapes of his movements, my cats, the people I observe, the shifting colors of nature. Afterwards, I turn to references, exploring different cultures, clothing, and traditions to enrich my imagination and transform it into images.

I worked on a compilation cover for the second volume of a series of comic books called Death Jr. published by Image comics. There had already been an initial run of the comics with 3 separate covers as well as a collection cover illustrated by a very popular comic book artist. I had complete autonomy in the composition and the stylization of the characters for the cover and had gotten approval before the coloring phase.

The general color scheme of the previous covers had usually been within the motif of the title: darker, gothic and somewhat earthier color palettes. But my instinct for this cover's color palette was to go bolder and brighter. But still within the context of the IP. The background sky color I had chosen was a very bright pink/red tone. Close to a deep Magenta, as opposed to the deep blue of the first volume or the grays, purples or even greens and ochre of the first few covers. I wanted my cover to stand out from the rest and make this compilation cover distinct and different. I had to represent an eye-catching cover to sell the rest of the great work everybody had done on the interiors after all!

But it apparently was so different in fact that a supervising art director had suggested that I follow the similar color palettes of the previous ones. But this was where I decided to stand my "color-theory-ground" and explain exactly why I had landed on that color. The deeper, gothic color palette had all been done before by previous artists and this compilation cover would just get lost in a sea of sameness. He didn't quite agree, but to his credit, he still let me go with it! And sure enough, when I finally saw the cover on a comic book shelf with a lot of other comic books around it, I felt that my gamble paid off.

And even to this day, while it was certainly risky for me to choose that color and have a creative clash with my superiors, it still is a cover that I am very proud and honored to have created. I felt justified when a peer, unprompted, actually told me that it is one of the more memorable covers from that IP.

One of the most exciting moments in my work was shifting toward 3D object-based scenes. It wasn’t so much a risk as a deliberate choice — I wanted to provide my clients with more unique and exclusive cover visuals, without the licensing restrictions that often come with photo-based covers.

Some of the first projects I applied this to were the Paradox Trilogy and the Demons After Dark: Covenant series. The timing was perfect: shortly after, AI-generated photo images began gaining momentum, which made my 3D approach even more valuable. The covers became immersive, cinematic, and distinctive, capturing the story’s atmosphere in a way that resonated strongly with both authors and readers.

This move gave me the confidence to continue developing my 3D-based process and reinforced the importance of creating covers that are both original and tailored to each story.