Covers drawn by hand. Never AI.
Real typography, real art direction, real decisions — on every cover.
A cover has one job — and a few seconds to do it
Before a reader has read a single word, the cover decides whether they pick the book up. On a shelf it competes with hundreds of others. On Amazon it’s a thumbnail the size of a stamp, fighting for a thumb that’s already scrolling. In both cases you have seconds.
Winning those seconds is craft, not luck. It’s the weight and spacing of the type, the one image that earns its place, the restraint to leave room to breathe, the title that’s still legible shrunk to a thumbnail. These are judgment calls, made by someone who has made them many times before.
Why never AI
We don’t use AI-generated artwork. Ever. Not as a moral pose — as a quality decision.
AI can fill a rectangle with something that looks plausible at a glance. It cannot make the calls that separate a cover that sells from one that just exists: why this type at this size, why this image and not the obvious one, what to leave out, how it reads at thumbnail size against the competition in your exact genre. It produces an average of everything it has seen. An average cover is invisible, and invisible doesn’t sell.
There’s also the practical side: AI artwork comes with murky rights and a generic look the eye has already learned to skip. Hand-made artwork is unambiguously yours, and it doesn’t look like everything else.
How the design process runs
- You brief us. Genre, tone, comparable titles you like, anything you picture. The more you share, the sharper the start.
- We present initial concepts. A few distinct directions, not one take-it-or-leave-it. You choose the direction that’s right.
- We refine the chosen route. Type, image, colour, balance — tightened to final, tested at full size and at thumbnail.
- Two revision rounds. Included, written into the quote. We’d rather get it right than rush it out.
- You receive everything, including the editable source files.
What’s included
- Original design in Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator
- No AI-generated artwork — ever
- Initial concepts to choose a direction
- Full print wrap: front, spine, back
- eBook cover sized for store thumbnails
- Open, editable source files (PSD / AI)
- Two revision rounds included
What you receive
- Print-ready cover wrap (PDF/X) — Front, spine and back, spine sized to your page count.
- eBook cover (store-sized) — Optimised to read as a thumbnail.
- Open source files (PSD / AI) — Yours to keep and edit.
The cover that fails — and why
Most covers that don’t sell fail the same handful of ways. We design against all of them:
- Title illegible at thumbnail size. It looks fine at full size and vanishes at the size readers actually first see it. We design thumbnail-first.
- Wrong genre signals. A literary cover on a thriller tells the reader it’s not for them before they read the blurb. The cover has to speak the genre’s visual language.
- Too much. Three fonts, a busy image, a gradient, a glow — clutter reads as amateur. Restraint reads as published.
- Generic stock or AI look. The eye has been trained to skip it. It signals “self-made.”
- No hierarchy. Title, author, image all shouting at once, so nothing lands. A cover needs one thing the eye hits first.
A cover is the single highest-leverage piece of design your book has. It’s the wrong place to economise.
You keep the source files
When the project is paid, you receive the open, editable PSD / AI source files. The artwork is yours — for this book in print and digital, for a future edition, for promo materials. We don’t hold your cover hostage. (Any licensed fonts or assets carry their own licences, which we’ll flag where relevant.)
Cover questions, answered
Can you design just the eBook cover?
Yes. If you only need digital, we deliver a store-sized front cover. Most authors take the full wrap so print is ready too.
I have an image / illustration already. Can you build around it?
Yes, if you have the rights to it. Send it over and we’ll art-direct the cover around it.
Can you match a series?
Yes. Send the existing covers and we’ll design the new one to sit alongside them as a set.
What if I don’t like the concepts?
That’s what the concept stage and two revision rounds are for. We present directions, you steer, we refine. Getting it right is the job.
Do you really never use AI?
Never. Every cover is drawn by hand in Photoshop and Illustrator.
Other services
Start your book.
Send us your manuscript and what you need. We reply with a plan, a fixed quote and a timeline — usually within 24 hours.