When I was writing and printing (PRINTING, not publishing — there's a big difference!) a cookbook for friends, I wanted a nice cover for it. My friend Lolly had done beautiful paintings of the vegetables, fruit, and fish the book featured.
First, I designed the cover myself, but it looked more home-made than Lolly's paintings deserved. So I asked my friend KC Witherell to design a cover, and she came up with this. I was amazed at what a difference her changes made — and thought the cover was done.
But she, a professional designer, wasn't satisfied. As she wrote,
"I hope it’s not TOOOOOO late. Here’s the cover, centered on 8.5 x 10, with the left hand margin the way the New Yorker does it…so smart..so that the thickness of the issue never changed the width of the art area…. This way, the spiral binding will not bite (visually) into the white background of the cover. Of the two, I like the one with the tiny flower replacing the ampersand best. I like the whole look of it and the balance, not just the flower.Meanwhile, the extra reason I hope its not too late is that when I looked at the cover type I sent, it was in really shitty shape. It was poorly spaced (unaddressed software issue) and had gotten slightly distorted."
