Book Cover Design
The Question is Murder
by Mark Willen
Book Cover Design.
The author, Mark Willen, first contacted me in 2020 to discuss the cover of his next novel, The Question is Murder. Already having a successful trilogy published, TQIM is Mark’s first standalone novel.
We started by pursing about a dozen different concepts, most highly experimental and involving different aspects from the book such as D.C., a reporter’s notebook, flip phone, spray paint, newspapers, and more.
When starting this project, there was not a clear direction of what the cover ought to look like. The client and publisher had some rough ideas of a question mark, reporter’s notebook, flip phone, and the capitol building as the novel is set in D.C.
I took on this project by first discussing half a dozen ideas with the author. Many of them he found interesting, so I then started creating rough concepts to visually show what we had discussed (like the left and middle vertical rows here).
As the rounds got on and we talked more about how the cover could relate to the book, we started narrowing the design down - including the capitol building, spray painted question mark, reporter’s notebook, and other elements.
