Thank you so, so much! I knew there could be something more done and this was really helpful in figuring out what exactly needs to be changed
Thank you! And coincidentally, I’ve been on a cover-making roll lately and all the designs have been simple so far
Oooh, that does make sense I was looking at my previous covers for reference and harsh text shadows were part of them, I just realized more realistic shadows tend to be blurrier
And I recognize that cover, I was one of the people watching the cover request thread when it was being made! It’s really nice
Oh, good suggestion! I was wondering how to make the text more fun, I’m used to “serious” layouts
Oh, that was one of my worries. I’ve noticed a lot of teen fiction books and romances have vector covers like these, and I was hoping the subtitle would be enough to not give off that vibe at least it doesn’t feel empty!
Oooh, I’ve only ever done black vignettes before, I might try a white or pastel one next
You can keep the vector, but maybe change the font? The font does remind me of a teenfic romance.
Poetry often uses handwritten font or thin, narrow font. You can find ones that are a little more playful and not so serious.
I made you up a little thing below. I’ve been looking into font psychology to accurately match font to genre, font to the message I want to get across, and so on.
I think these are fonts you have or can download easily if you don’t.
How I chose the font if you want to know about that
My thought process was that chonky fonts (like what you have now) are good because they stand out on a complicated background. But the thing is that, they are like display fonts. They make a statement. Plus, the background is simple, they tend to make a bold statement like you might do for a teenfic. Teens like making bold statements. You want to catch their eye. You want to scream the title in their faces and make them give you their short attention span
I think that’s why recent covers for teens use a lot of vectors. It’s simple enough that it makes teens pause for a moment to see what’s up. Too complicated and they’re like…“eh, not worth my 2 seconds”.
Taking that into consideration, that your book is poetry, but poetry done during school, and with fun intentions, you can move onto finding the right font. So, you’d probably want something that stands out, but is a tad serious because poetry, but you also want it to be fun and light-hearted.
Stands out: unique font but not too hard to read because of the simple cover. You can go overboard, but then you might need to redesign the whole thing. It should also be thick enough, but not chonky.
Serious: Something more sans serif, but also still slightly serif, but not cursive because it’s not a romance story.
Fun and light-hearted: You want it to look like a slightly serious poetry book filled with poems reflecting the time you wrote it. So, maybe a school, hand-written type of font.
Here are my suggestions:
I put the blue background on there so you get a sense of what it looks like on your cover. Also added in a shadow blur. And I tried out other font with the colored shadow.
Some more explanation about the font if you want to know
Laughing Gull might be too much, but maybe not. It’s hard to really tell until you put it on the cover.
If you can get Brizel or a font like it, I think it’s pretty fun. Pencil Pete might be a little too thin. Amatic is good if you don’t mind the all-caps. The good thing about Sue Ellen Francisco is that you can make it all caps if you want to and it is very similar to Amatic.
The most common, I think, poetry from school vibes is: Josefin Slab and Schoolbell (or some other notebook-handwriting type font).
Obviously, I’m some kind of font nerd
But I read these really interesting articles about font psychology and once I started thinking about it and applying it to my covers, people seem to understand my covers more.
Mood / Vibe of the Cover: Dark, vampiric
Genre: Fantasy/Romance
Specific Questions if any: Does the vampire aspect come through? If not, how can I make sure it does?
NOTES: the cover seems to have a Stranger Things vibe but the red swirly, fire-y thing is an enlarged moon png. With a layer of red over it. Since I associate the red in the cover with blood and vampires.
Aww, that wasn’t too much seriously, that was really helpful! When I pick fonts I just go for aesthetic and how it makes me feel, I only vaguely know stuff like serif = serious
Also, I took some of your suggestions! I changed the shadows and played with the title a little more. I can’t really decide between these fonts, though, so which one do you suggest?
First impression: I like how ominous it is with the darkness and the red
I have a question: is “classicfiction” your author name? You don’t have to change it or anything. Just wondering.
Critiques
The Vampire Aspect
To be honest with you, I got more of a horror movie vibe but not particularly vampire More like paranormal. Maybe a demon, but not vampire. You could add in some element in the background to make it vampire, but I think the best option here is to change the font.
You need something that is pointy and like it has fangs. I would also suggest to make the text color a little brighter because right now, it’s blending in with the cover. People scrolling Wattpad will see this as a tiny thumbnail and you’d want to capture their attention. Either a brighter silver, or a white. Maybe add a shadow behind the text to make it pop.
Here are some free fonts you could use: font 1 or font 2 or font 3. These are not over the top because if you go too over the top, it starts to look like a medieval horror story with gothic knights and kings type of font.
What you’re looking for is a font that says “I’m a vampire”. You’d want to stay narrow, slick, and sophisticated. You’d want to have a little something extra (pointy font looking like fangs), but not too much. That comes off as vampire - a sophisticated being with fangs.
The Moon
Also, the moon looked like a galaxy to me Probably because of how much it’s blended at the bottom there and how it takes up the top half of the cover. Maybe you could make the moon a little smaller? Just a suggestion
So, that’s all I’ve got. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and if you have any more covers you want to have critiqued, come back again any time
As you can see, this is much better. It’s still ominous but the font is brighter, the moon is smaller. I’ll definitely use the fonts you suggested to try out. But this one is so much better than the second one I showed you.
I love the moon! It looks like it’s coming out of the cover. And the font color looks much brighter. I think you did great Now all that’s left is the font.
Hi Enna! I’m back with another simple poetry cover this time it’s a more serious poetry book, not fun and experimental like the other one
Cover (current and previous versions if you have):
So this is the only version I have of it. (Well technically there’s an older version but the difference is negligible and I don’t have it with me anymore )
Mood/Vibe of the Cover: Serious. Like a craftsman studying and practicing his craft to get good at it. Contemplative and straight from the heart, geddit? This book is basically me writing a bunch of sonnets, and only sonnets, so that I can eventually get the hang of writing sonnets. Some of them may cover more serious or personal topics too, so not light-hearted at all.
Genre: Poetry
Specific Questions if any: So one of the main reasons why I have the cover the way it currently is is so that it can match my cover for my other poetry collection. I’ll put the two side by side so you can compare.
Dark, simple, serious, serif fonts, both look like they can be related somehow???
So my first specific question: do the two covers above go well together?
And my next question: what changes can I make to make the sonnets cover match the other cover more? I’m thinking of filling in the hands with white and the heart with red
These minimalistic poetry covers also served as the inspiration for the covers above, if they help you with giving a critique!
inspo covers
You really helped me with my experimental poetry cover, I’d be more grateful to hear more of your feedback thank you!
Before I get into this, I don’t have the patience to write out your titles, so I’ll be abbreviating them to “from the depths” and “sonnets” I just wanted to let you know, so you wouldn’t think I completely misunderstood that the entire thing is the title.
First impression:
Nice with that splash of red, “sonnets”. Although, it does make me think of blood and hence dark stuff. So, lots of dark poetry, but not like dark as in gruesome. I’ll be expecting lots of gritty poetry about war and violence and that sort of thing. And this impression isn’t only because of the red. It’s red on black.
Answering your questions:
Btw, thank you for having specific questions. It’s really easy for me to critique. I don’t mind having a cover thrown at me with just “critique this!”, but sometimes those critiques get chaotic and all over the place as I think of things. It’s nice to only have to answer questions XD
Covers go well together?
They…kind of go together. But I would have to be told that, I think. Since the composition is different (text placement) I wouldn’t think they are together. And one has a filled-in silhouette while the other is line art. It does look like they both might have a similar style in content and definitely see the consistency in terms of being related to the same author. If I went to a bookstore and I knew about “from the depths” and saw “sonnets” I might recognize that “Oh, is this another Stella book? Yes, yes it is.”
But I wouldn’t think the poetry is related. The “from the depths” looks like it’s more meloncholy (left that spelling mistake in for your entertainment ), profound and thoughtful topics, maybe philosophy, something about stars and constellations, perhaps? It’s definitely lighter than “sonnets” but still serious.
How to make the covers match?
Well, I don’t think it’s just about changing “sonnets”. You might also need to alter “from the depths”.
Three Options
Option 1: Put something red in “from the depths”. Maybe make one word red. I would say “mind” could be red. If you make “depths” red, which is the first one I thought of, people might associate it with blood and hell. Or at least death Unless you want that, I would say “mind” is a better candidate. And making it red would also bring out the darker side of “from the depths” as right now, at least personally, I don’t get the sense that “from the depths” is as dark as “sonnets”. Also, make the silhouette girl into line art to match with the hands in “sonnets”.
Option 2: Fill in the hands in “sonnets”. Only the hands. And turn all the red into white. You lose that splash of color, yes, but the other one doesn’t have a splash of color.
Option 3: Do the same text placement for “sonnets” as you did for “from the depths”. Then have one hand holding a heart rather than two, off to the side. Fill in the hand with white. Leave the red text as red and the heart as red line art. You might also make “mind” red in “from the depths” to match and give it an added dark feel.
When deciding between these, think of how much you want the covers to relate and also think about what the red signifies because red would make most people think of blood, violence, and death whether you intend it or not. Especially, red on black.
I would suggest trying out the third option because that would really make it look like these are related.
Well, that’s my critique. Take it with a grain of salt, ask me additional questions if you want, come again, yada yada, you know the drill
(edit: and you did not see that I wrote “coves” instead of “covers”)
LOL UNDERSTANDABLE I don’t know why my poetry books tend to have longer titles, they just do
Ooooh, I see I might change the red to a softer, more pinkish red or gold then, because while there will probably be dark stuff in there it’s not going to be overly violent unlike my WIP
I only colored it red because hearts have blood, and blood is red
Oh yeah, you got a point. When I posted the two side by side I realized that the text placement—and size—could use some changes to match the other cover more as well as the line art vs filled-in silhouette.
That’s also true! from the depths of my mind, they flutter free is lighter overall so far, and it does have some melancholic stuff in there. It’s also free verse and a bit more experimental, whereas sonnets from a silent heart is more rigid—because if you don’t stick to the rules, it’s not a sonnet anymore
I quite like the third option I think I’ll probably change the red to another color then, like gold or pinkish red. I did some research on sonnets and a lot of them tend to be about love, so maybe a pinkish red would be more suitable? I’m not sure if I’m going to make most of my sonnets entirely about love, though but it’ll definitely be more prominent than violence
Thank you, and I shall return with the changes made! Thank you so much
EDIT: I have returned with some changes! I did edit both covers, but the cover for from the depths of my mind, they flutter free has much more subtle changes. I realized that the author name on that cover was using a different font, so I changed it to share the same font as the title, and I played around with the spacing more. I also lowered the silhouette of the girl and changed the position of the bottom stars to match (as well as add more stars).
I changed the position of the title for sonnets from a silent heart too. I didn’t want it to exactly mirror the other cover since it’s not exactly related—the only real similarities are that they contain poetry written by me so I put the text in the corner, but instead of putting them in the bottom left, I put them in the top right. I did put them at equal space from the edges of the cover, though.
I also realized that I was using Cormorant Garamond Medium for sonnets from a silent heart instead of Cormorant Light like from the depths of my mind, they flutter free, so I changed the fonts to match. I also matched the letter spacing and the sizes, except that the title for sonnets from a silent heart is slightly bigger. I removed the color from the word “heart” so that it’ll match the rest of the text. I think the line spacing is also different
I also used one hand and filled it in instead of leaving it as line art.
Actually, now that I’ve been looking at it for longer, I might change the hand back to line art the poetry books don’t belong to the same series or anything; I just thought of giving them a similar look, like how some authors like to give all their books a similar look. I guess I’ll change it back to line art later
EDIT 2: I ended up changing the hand back to line art, since it didn’t really fit with the heart to me. I did make a few other changes though, like rotating the heart so that it lay in the hand more realistically and increasing the line spacing of the title to match the line spacing of from the depths of my mind, they flutter free.
And after looking at one of the inspo covers (bruised knees), I decided to “cut out” part of the line art of the hand. Not sure whether it’s better. Which of the below do you prefer?
EDIT 3: I’m putting it here so that I don’t take up the thread too much but remember my cover for one line at a time? I went a font-downloading spree recently and ended up downloading more handwritten fonts, and now I’m wondering which font to use for the title again
Okay, the closed wrist one looks like Thing from the Addams’ Family So, let me call it that for easier communication. I like the cover that doesn’t have Thing on it. Also, do you supposed you could let the heart kind of float above the hand. In side the hand, it looks like it could be anything and since the other cover has stars? flying out of the head, maybe this one could have a heart flying out of the hand?
I think your choice of heart color is much better. I’m not getting a sense of blood and murder
One Line at a Time
Ooooh, I have a soft spot for Annie Use Your Telescope. I used to use it a LOT when I first started making covers. But I need to be unbiased…okay, so let me say what each cover looks like they could be about:
Font 1: Juice ITC
A little bit of quirky poetry involving a student girl or student life or having been written by a student. There’s some deep stuff, but most of it is going to be light. Even funny. It’ll be a fun time to read these poems. Might even laugh. There’s going to be poems that are wild and crazy like the weird dreams you have at night.
Font 2: Sue Ellen Francisco
This one looks like…it’s not so serious. In fact, the poetry might even be a little unfinished, but that’s okay. It’s not really for publishing publishing. This is just for Wattpad. I have a sense that there will be cute little poems and maybe haiku about love and friendship written during school. The poetry will also feel quite young. Maybe even high school or junior high. Prose won’t be too complex either. Much inspiration from lighthearted “dear diary” entries written as a child and read back as an adult.
Font 3: Annie Use Your Telescope
Light and happy. Student life, student drama, written by a student in poetry form. It might become a little serious sometimes, but then it goes right back to lighthearted stuff. You want to be taken seriously, but not too seriously. Thinking of journal entries in poetry form, too.
Keep in mind, these are my subjective observations.
And coincidentally, I’ve been on a cover-making roll lately and all the designs have been simple so far 
I was looking at my previous covers for reference and harsh text shadows were part of them, I just realized more realistic shadows tend to be blurrier 
at least it doesn’t feel empty!
I think it looks fun but with a school-student type of vibe.
More like paranormal. Maybe a demon, but not vampire. You could add in some element in the background to make it vampire, but I think the best option here is to change the font.
), profound and thoughtful topics, maybe philosophy, something about stars and constellations, perhaps? It’s definitely lighter than “sonnets” but still serious.
