Armchair BEA- Aesthetic Concerns

 



The Books: How often do you judge a book by its cover? How often are you surprised by what you find? Do you strategize and make sure every book in your series has the same cover design (as far as you are able to) and type? How important is it for the visual art on the outside of the book to match or coordinate with the literature art on the inside? 

While a cover can sucker me in to looking at a book, the synopsis (or trusted author) is the clincher.  Titles can get me just as easily as an interesting cover.  

I do love books with embossed covers though.  Texture adds a lot!  

Books do not have to match.  I even have some series' with a hardback/paperback mix.  WHile it is nice to get them to match (and on some I do work on it over time), it is far from required.  They content and story is what is important to me.  

I dont; like when the art has nothing to do with the story (like showing a city when the book takes place in a desert). Or the characters look WAY off from the description (character is 27 but the guy on the cover looks 50!). While it is a nice touch to pull it all together, it is not necessarily.  






As a book blogger, in whatever form that takes, branding is important. Your colors, your fonts, your style of review, all of these things come together to make the "brand" of your blog - something that makes your reviews and posts and websites, all your various content, immediately recognizable to the people looking for you. What do you do to create a brand on your site? Do you think about these things? 

I am terrible here.  I have no skill to for graphic design or coding, etc.  I spent forever finding a free background image that expressed any personality and a good friend of mine created the Title banner to match.  Honestly I would like to change it up but don't have the skill to do so and really don't feel comfortable asking him to change it all up.  It wasn't his type of project and that sill leave me with colors and backgrounds to try and adjust and that took an insane amount of hours the first time.  So while it is old, it is what it is unless someone wants to use it as a pet project.  
I use the dragons as a rating system and I guess it has kind of become my brand but the symbol has been around for years and is not solely mine so....yeah...