Revised Book Cover Design

A revised cover design for An Introduction to John Owen.

Backstory:
I experienced in an acute way what many other designers know—that there is nothing new under the sun.

When out on a video shoot for work the other day, I happened upon a book published eight years ago on the Puritans. Of all the puritans that could have been put on the cover, the designer chose this painting of John Owen. It would not have been a big deal if they had not cropped his portrait in the EXACT same way I had done on my initial design for this book cover (see rebound).

My team all liked that first design but we ultimately decided to change it.

This new cover is in keeping with the original design decisions and underlying thought process but is an alternative execution.

This presented a nice challenge to try to improve upon the original design, or, at least, to make a lateral move. It also became an interesting experiment in exploring how one interprets a person based upon different ways of cropping their portrait.