For simplicity, let’s call these covers 1, 2, and 3.
Cover 1
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Cover 2
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Cover 3
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It seems to be VERY DIFFICULT to get borders on the sides. I’m serious. Every frame and border, the sides vanish as you move the frame into place. I have no idea about that and, once more, I’m going to reiterate that my patience for this is running low-ish, so I’m feeling that putting borders on the top and bottom is good enough. BUT I am glad to try a greenish background. What do you think?
Canva mostly wants to put a picture of some sort on the background. I’m having to scroll past a million cover images to find the blank ones that are basically plain colors.
Again, against a white background, the palest color does show up better. I grant, it’s never going to show up as well as a darker background. If enough of you say you prefer a darker background, I’ll bow to your collective wisdom, especially because to be honest, I pretty much do like all of these about equally.
Please Feel Free to Share:
Cover 1 (white)
But all three look good
I went back and labeled the covers individually to avoid confusion, but I think you mean the middle one, now labeled “cover 2,” right?
Oops! Yes I mean cover 2. Thank you
My vote for versions two and three. And between those two I prefer three ^^
I prefer #1 (aged parchment). The other colors are just too plain. If there was some sort of textured blue, that might be nice.
I like the parchment texture, but the beige colour fits the least with the volours of the image.
I like the clarity of the image colours on the lightest background 2, but not the heavy black top and bottom border of the image on that light background – the lighter version in the previous post looks better to me than no.2.
On the darker green background of no.3 the heavier black border bars do look well, and that colour is pretty good with the image, too.
I like the double top/bottom borders on covers 1 and 2.
+1 to Robert’s comment that a textured blue (or green) would be nice for the background.
Looking at the books from this series that I have on my shelf, each cover has a mix of white and ornate gray lettering, so white lettering could be a possibility for the Companion if the current black lettering doesn’t show up well against a darker background.
Ha ha, you’re not getting much helpful consensus, here, are you?! Although I agree that beige isn’t as good for bringing out the central picture, the combination of colour and texture makes me think of an old encyclopaedia, which fits with what the book is. (Out-of-the-box thought: is there a graphics program that would easily convert the picture into something resembling a wood-block print? That might look cool.)(Sorry: I’m not helping!)
The colours without texture are boring in comparison, in my opinion.
Kim, you are indeed NOT HELPING.
I hope you are all not too bored with this yet, because I will run ONE more set of possible covers by you all next week. Despite swearing that I’m done and I’m not going to make any more iterations … I have kind of made some more iterations. Frustrating as it is, Canva is still rather seductive. BUT I am still leaning toward the pale parchment colored one myself. I think.
If there is a paler (off-white, or white-and-pale-cream) parchment available for tge background, I think that would look good.
Hanneke, if different shades and colors of parchment had presented themselves, I would have tried them. I’ll run a few more past you all next week, blue versions, but so far opinions are all over the place, so I might wind up mostly flipping coins.
I kind of like the green cover. And I like the illustration. I wonder what would happen if you made the two bars on the top and bottom of the picture a lighter color instead of black. Because the lower right hand corner of the picture looks a skosh too dark at the moment and a lighter color might help that. Just an idle thought however; keep or toss!
Interesting suggestion, Jeanine, thank you! I’ll see how much trouble it is to try that.