When you’re publishing a new line of books (whether those are sourcebooks, rulebooks, novels, and so on), there’s a pile of different things to take into consideration.

Most people immediately think of the written content or the art. But one of the most important (and often the unsung heroes of any book line) is the graphic presentation and layout, both on the cover as well as the interior pages. By that I mean the graphic elements on a cover or page that make text and illustrations not only pop off the page, and get your imagination fired up, but actually make it easier to read and understand what’s being read.

And when it comes to a brand new line of novels for Shadowrun…the first such novels in 8 years…well, a lot of time was spent figuring out the direction to take the covers. After all, once you set a style, you’re going to keep that style for long years and dozens (hopefully, of course) of novels. So you need to try and knock it out the first time around.

There were tons of discussions including talking with with mass market buyers and each of us simply standing in front of our walls of books and/or walking up and down book stores to get a sense of what covers work and what doesn’t. And if a cover works, why does it work.

All of this lead to a string of iterations (which you’ll see below), each picked apart and a new string of “best elements” moved forward while those we felt weren’t working were dropped.

Coloring and over-all look on the two above are the same, but the second version adds in some funky line movements which help to create a sense of movement and action.

The third cover above completely drops the extra texture off the back, while the fourth adds that “funky line” elements above and below the back cover text.

This last one we started playing around with the spine. The way in which an illustration could be displayed there and even the subtleness of the company logo orientation.

Then, as is usually a good idea, we took a brand new approach from a completely different direction, even though we were really liking the first approach; a full bleed cover (meaning the illustration goes all the way to the edge). Sometimes that completely new approach will ultimately be the path chosen. Or sometimes it’s just a great way to re-affirm that your first approach was the best.

These last two images I included to show the extreme subtlety of tweaks we kicked around during the process. The only change from the two is the switching of the background coloring between the top and bottom and middle sections on the back.

Too extreme? Well, again, remember that we’re launching a look that needs to hit the target like a strike between a Troll’s eyes at a thousand meters, and carry that look for years to come. Are we confident? Absolutely…this is Shadowrun after all! But that doesn’t mean we’re not kicking and kicking to make the best looking cover we can create.

Taking all of the work done above (and there’s easily another dozen iterations I didn’t even include) and rolling in Victor’s brilliant cover, we get the final cover design for the first Shadowrun novel that just sent to print (available summer!).

Finally, speaking of unsung heroes…our graphic designers and layout team in Matt Heerdt and Ray Arrastia. They work long hours and almost every day pull off miracles, taking hundreds of thousands of words in a year and weaving them into gorgeous books we love to read and enjoy. Not to mention putting up with endless “can you just change this sentence into this giant paragraph” even after the books all laid out (can’t believe both of them still talk to me on some days).

One of the things I find most enjoyable in all the work I do is simply working with skilled, creative, enthusiastic people to create awesome games that are fun to play and fantastic to read about. And the process of working on these covers once again proved Matt’s awesomesauce (if for no other reason then putting up with us constantly asking him to tweak for “one more iteration) a thousand times over.

Next time you see either Matt or Ray online or at a convention, seriously, thank them. The best game in the world, or the best novel in the world, doesn’t mean anything if your imagination isn’t fired to pick it up because it just looks so cool!

Randall