By Carol Hinz
Editorial Director, Millbrook Press
Designing covers for a new series is always a challenge. One of Millbrook’s new fall series, Life in Ancient Civilizations, was especially difficult. How do you capture an entire culture on a cover? Each book’s cover needs to appeal to the target audience (grades 3-6) while also giving librarians and teachers a clear sense of the book’s content.
For this series, illustrator Sam Hiti provided artwork of each of the six books. He developed a unique color palette for each civilization. Sam’s style is grounded in the world of comic books and graphic novels, which sets this series apart from other Ancient Civ series. The interiors of the books also include about ten photos of key artifacts from each culture.
Early in the cover design process, we decided that the covers should have just illustrations, rather a combination of photos and illustrations. Then the book’s designer, Sam, and I did some brainstorming about possible approaches for the covers. Here are a few of Sam’s early sketches:
We decided to try another approach. In the background is a cityscape. One of the culture’s key leaders is superimposed over the cityscape. And below are a few little scenes capturing common activities in the culture, showing the lives of women and children as well as men. Here is a sketch of the cover for The Aztecs using this approach:
