A Cover Story

… or more accurately a story about a cover.  (I do love to start posts with an ellipsis!)

With many books, the cover design comes after the content is largely settled and even formatted.  I then have to push the author for any ideas he or she might want passed on to the cover designer, and in general the designer gets suggestions that are, well, general.

In the case of our forthcoming book The Jesus Paradigm by David Alan Black, the author provided me with cover suggestions along with the manuscript.  He told me about a work of art that he thought was absolutely perfect for his book.  He wasn’t satisfied that I include that picture amongst the various ideas we would toss around.  If I could get permission to use it and get a design produced around it, he wanted that picture.

The image in question was Crucifixion by Gregory Eanes.  This picture is part of his Lacrimae Rerum series.

And indeed this image does tell in art a story that connects closely with The Jesus Paradigm.  So that image is in the process of becoming the cover for the new book.  Because we are working with such a special work of art, I wanted to emphasize it with this post.

You can see a thumbnail to the left which links to a page with a larger image on the artist’s web site.  Thus far we have only gotten to the advance copy cover, which means that considerable discussion and design work will still take place, but I think we’re off to a good start.  Below is an image of the advance copy cover for The Jesus Paradigm.

We are also using this same image as a theme image inside the book, including the title page.  The crown of thorns panel occurs in each chapter heading.

We’re thankful to the artist for his permission to use his work.  I hope you’ll take a look at this and some of his other works.