However, I’d love to keep the book in the other cover (the one with the red background and a man laughing upwards) because that indeed is very fancy and yet captivating.

I’m reading independence now and I think the interior is fine, the text is set nicely and legibly on standard wood free stock which I quite like and the cover is nice and thick.

My only major reservation might be the depth of the gutter and binding, which makes it much harder to read text close to the inside margins – especially when using just one hand.

[...] gratifying to read about other’s appreciating our efforts, such as here, on the excellent Design Nigeria blog. In Dependence was designed by Lynn [...]

Heeheehee! Expect more mouthy arsy comments like this one from me my lovely! Xxx

Her novel isn’t quite the multi-faceted exploration of interracial or transatlantic relationships, that this cover suggests. The UK cover imho, whilst lacking in as much depth and meaning, would be a lot more successful at grabbing the attention of the chick-lit-loving femme.

It is indeed and that is what design is about, solving a problem visually, relaying communication, not just making pretty things – failure to understand this fundamental is why so many Nigerian websites have fancy features that do little to aid visual communication (flash…knowing that most Nigerians have snail speed internet) O_o.

The illustrator Lynn Hatzius was kind enough to make a mention of our feature at her blog lynnhatzius.blogspot.com, some other great designs there.

I didn’t actually ask about the colour purple, Author’s normally don’t have much to do with a book cover design – that decision normally comes from the publisher and to be honest I was surprised she was able to answer this one! So I didn’t ask another design related question to avoid all the literary people with their literary questions, chasing me out! ha!