If I’m chewing my fingernails, it must be a day for design. I had the bad habit of chewing my nails when I was a child, but managed to break myself of it long ago. That is, unless I’m designing something. As I stated before, I don’t have my Mom’s talent for illustration. I have to make do with a limited computer program and a stunted artistic mind. I started off today with nice long(ish) nails. No longer.

To me, design is simultaneously fun and stressful. This, much like the title, is a first impression judgement zone. I really like our concept. Rachael came over at 1:30 this afternoon, and my Mom proceeded to dress us like steam-punk adventurer/pirates. Which is pretty amazing if you ask me. I don’t think I’ve ever worn that many layers at one time. It took us about an hour to get dressed, ten minutes to shoot the images, and the rest of the day to try and figure out the best way to arrange the cover.

We never did settle on a good front cover. After five hours, it just wasn’t coming together the way we imagined. So we began work on the back cover. THAT we were able to do a rough draft of in about thirty minutes, using other books for a guideline. Below is our final effort for today. Rachael and Mom have since gone home.

I was disappointed in myself for not getting both the front and back done today, but instead of worrying about it until I feel sick, which is starting to happen, after this post, I’m going to make myself go do something not related to a computer, text, or photos and try again tomorrow.

Let us know what you think of our first efforts, and if you have any tried and true websites with advice for great cover designs!

Rough Draft of Back of Book

Right at 35 days before my 35th birthday, Rachael and I found out that a book we wrote about our experience making our first film “No Lost Cause,” was being returned to us by the publisher after a year of waiting for it to be printed. Instead of wallowing in our collective misery, I committed to blogging every day while I searched for ways to overcome this perceived rejection and obstacle to our goal. I currently also have about three other projects brewing at the same time, and write about the progress of each of them. This is part of that series.

Read the first entry here: https://ashleyraymerbrown.com/2015/01/23/35-days-to-35-dealing-with-rejection/