Reddit reviews The Duchess Deal: Girl Meets Duke

Glad you like it! It's fun working on something that's not a boring black-and-white label with idiotic client demands :) :| :(

>I like the filter and the image on 2.0

Yesss. Remember how I bashed on filters earlier and said they were a crutch? Behold! NO FILTER was used in 2.0. The background art is unedited. >:D

>Titling is something I struggle with because I don't have a great program to do it with.

I'm guessing you use something like paint.net? Good program for certain things, but limited. Better options are:

1. GIMP. It's free, and I totally could have made cover 2.0 with it. I know this because I used Gimp for years. It has everything you need for titling. Even font beveling, which most free programs lack.
   
   
2. Photoshop CS2. Too old, you say? Wrong. CS2 has every feature I used to make 2.0. I would know: I have a copy of that decade-old software running on my backup computer, and it's got more than enough bells and whistles for cover design. A used copy on ebay runs $20 to $50.
   
   ***
   
   Before I offer critiques on your covers, I thought it might be useful to explain how I made mine in enough detail that you could replicate it.
   
   Here we go.
   
   

• The background art was public domain, as I mentioned. The only decision was where to crop, since the painting is three times as large as the final cover. The church was an obvious focal point. The open sky provided plenty of space for a title, and the road offered adequate room for an author name.
  
  Note the church steeple is not actually centered on the cover. This is because of the gaslamp on the right side. If I cropped with the steeple smack in the middle, the lamp would be crowded against the edge of the cover. Compromises.
  
  
• The top ornament was free off pngtree.com. 30 seconds of searching for "ornament" found it. Surprisingly came in a golden gradient, so I didn't have to tweak it all.
  
  
• The title font was free for commercial use, found on google fonts. I picked a serif font because that's what the majority of fantasy books go with. (Sci-fi generally uses sans-serif, and other genres have their own conventions.)
  
  The line spacing between "Magical" and Mischief" was tweaked to be close, but not cramped. "Mischief" was reduced in size to make it line up better with the top line.
  
  I applied a bevel effect to the font to give it that carved 3D look. A subtle external glow effect was applied to make sure the title was the dominant element.
  
  Also, the title is on a higher priority layer than the ornaments, allowing it to rest on top of them. This lets me position the ornaments ever-so-slightly behind the letters, adding further dimension to the design and preventing a sterile look that often comes when elements are positioned too carefully.
  
  
• The bottom ornament is just the top ornament flipped. They were actually part of a single image when downloaded, but I split them. They were manually resized and positioned.
  
  
• The subtitle is Times New Roman. This font gets a bad rap in the design world, but it's compact, sharp, discreet, and never offended anyone. Come at me bro.
  
  Positioning was a no-brainer. I put it below the horizontal line of the church roof, and above the heads of the left-hand carriage riders. Margins are comfortable.
  
  
• The two gaslamp sparkles were free again on pngtree. The left sparkle was resized and rotated to avoid a duplicated look.
  
  
• The wisps of smoke through the lower half of the art is just me sweeping the dodge tool with the mouse. (Also possible with a low-opacity white paintbrush.) I did this to balance the bottom half of the image against the lighter title and ornaments. It lends a mysterious feel too, I think, which fits the theme.
  
  
• The author name is the same font as the title, beveled slightly less because small fonts appear too thin when over-beveled. There is no glow effect here, unlike the title, because the result would appear too light when layered over the dodged smoke.
  
  The margin between the name and the bottom edge of the cover is similar to the margin between the upper ornament and the cover's top edge. I would actually prefer the name a touch higher, but then it would cover the carriage wheels. Compromise.
  
  And that's how I slopped it together :P
  
  Onward to your cover critiques!
  
  
  
  I already went over your Insulan Empire cover, and it's the simplest and weakest, so no need to flog that horse again.
  
  WHITE NIGHTS
  
  Writers talk about starting books with a hook, and the same concept applies to graphic design. This cover lacks a visual hook. If I'm scrolling through Amazon I'd barely giving it a second glance, and why should I? The title, White Nights, doesn't tell me anything. The art is a photograph of a building with a nigh-unnoticeable man standing in the left corner. No emotion or sense of story is evoked. It's a testament to the perils of public domain covers.
  
  The position of "White" is too far to the right (note the difference between the margins on each side) but its vertical placement is not bad. "Nights" is crowding the right edge, probably because you didn't want to cut off the N's flourish. I found it interesting that later, with City Spirits, you allowed the C's flourish to bleed off the cover. Good instincts. It's a bold choice, works well if the font supports it, and the human eye can effortlessly follow invisible curves.
  
  I'm not a fan of the title font choice. The loopy fancy letters are more typical of romances (click it) than dark fantasy. The name and sparkles only drive that nail further. Genre confusion.
  
  The author name's font clashes with the title. The position of the name is high, and the L in Stanley is running into the I above it. Justifying both names flush left and moving them down, level with the top of the road and just right of the figure would be a logical position.
  
  HERE BE DRAGONS
  
  Conceptually, there's disconnect between the title and the art. The cruise ship is a strong image, but I struggle to draw a link between it and Here Be Dragons. I'm not sure what to expect from the story. In comparison, imagine a murder mystery with a similar cover and the title "Vacations Shouldn't be Fatal"--a sense of story is immediately grasped.
  
  This isn't a bad cover technically. The title is a little cramped with letters bleeding into one another, but still legible.
  
  The bottom margin on the author name is good, and reflects the title's top margin.
  
  CITY SPIRITS
  
  Again with the harlequin romance font ;P
  
  Seriously, you changed Krovt to this, but the previous font was a far better choice for a ghost story. It had a rough, uneven, creepy quality. Shoulda kept it.
  
  You mentioned it, but I don't mind the low contrast--a white cover fits the title name and theme. And I already said I don't mind the C's flourish bleeding off the page. I DO mind how close "Spirits" is to the edge. The author name has the same problem. It's crammed in there.
  
  The dark grey graphic in the lower left is distracting, drawing attention to an empty corner, and looks cut off at the bottom. The other graphic sweeping through the middle looks cut off on the right. Neither convey meaning or serve a design purpose.
  
  KROVT
  
  Technically sound. Good choice of a longer font to give a short title more real estate. Very wide margins on the top and bottom of the cover, but they're perfectly equal, so it comes off as bold and stylish instead of a mistake. The only weakness is lack of a hook. An unknown fantasy name and indecipherable art (especially at thumbnail size) make for poor lures.
  
  The L and E in Louise are chopped off by the last name. Adding a bullet point to dot the I would aid comprehension.
  
  I'm guessing you changed the name to City Spirits because you thought Krovt was a hard sell for a title, and it is, but heck, just putting a ghost or something on the cover is enough of a hook you could leave the name as is. In that case, the foreign title might be more intriguing than confusing. In fact, I'll prove it:
  
  I hop on pngtree, search for "evil," and find this guy. He'll do.
  
  Then I fire up paint.net, just to prove the point. I paste mister cat into a new layer and set his blending to "screen" so the original shows through. Pumping up the brightness makes him white, tweaking hue makes him blue. Set the opacity to match the rest of the cover, and hey presto.
  
  Adding a pronunciation symbol over the title plays up the foreign angle, and the author name is made more legible with a paintbrush and line tool, again using screen blending. Ten minutes and what do we get? A pretty cool cover.
  
  
  
  This concludes Snarky's School of Slipshod Design.
  
  No refunds.