Visual/Design Team

Creating this eBook has been a whirlwind process!

As a member of the visual design team, I was responsible with Matt Harrison to come up with the cover art for our eBook (final cover art was finished by Sam McGrath). We took different approaches to finding the cover art; I checked Flikr's Creative Commons-licensed photos, while Matt checked out iStockPhoto.com. The first group of pictures I posted I was really excited about--especially works that had been remixed to include old and new artwork. For instance, one piece of art was a remix of Mary Cassatt's "Mrs. Duffee Seated on a Striped Sofa, Reading." In the original, Mrs. Duffee is obviously reading a traditional codex; in the remix, the book has been replaced with a Kindle. I thought it was very original.

It turns out that my classmates and instructor were more excited about a picture that I had put up sort of just to prove that I had done my research and looked at different options. It's a picture of a woman reading a magazine, standing in front of a quickly-moving train. It has a nice nuance to it; it suggests class and traditional forms of scholarship in the context of an evolving world. It's not what I would have personally chosen, but I am satisfied with it.

In order to make it eBook-ready, I used a basic Paint program to add the title of our book. Sam contacted me on Saturday and told me that unfortunately, the picture was not a high-enough resolution to use as our cover. I went back to get a higher-resolution picture on Flikr, but the poster of the picture had taken it down between the time that I first found it and the time that I needed the higher-resolution picture. Sam solved the problem by adding a funky border to the picture that makes it the needed size.