Faculty and students of Cumberland University have worked together to write several short stories and compile them into a book called "Tales from the Cumberland." It was originally going to be named "Poenix Pages" because the Phoenix is the school mascot. They told me their thoughts on the design for the book cover, and I got to work. I sketched a simple bird design and planned to fill the shape with a solid color and placed it on a white background.
I settled on this basic shape and photographed it.
I added a curves adjustment and traced around the shape with the blob tool. I filled it with black and opened it in Photoshop. I inverted the images of fire so that the black background in the photo became white to match the cover design. Then I applied a gradient map so that the fire changed back to it's natural color instead of the inverted blue color. The fire also required a finely tuned curves adjustment after being inverted.
I offered the following graphics as another option to use in the cover, and they used the imagery without asking me to design the layout of the title and text on the cover.
I regret that they used my graphic without letting me create the text layout for the final cover. The final cover on Amazon does not reflect my cabibilities, style, or talent.
If they had given me the opportunity to create the layout, this is how it would have looked. Instead the book was published using my imagery but without my knowledge.
