I thought I read somewhere that the cover photos of Stark
House's Gil Brewer and Harry Whittington books were original
photos that were used as source material for original painted
covers of hardboiled crime books from the 50s, which I
thought was interesting.
A word to the designer, though--as a designer myself I see a
lot of missed opportunities on the Stark House covers. For
example, the black and white photos on the above-mentioned
books could be rendered as duotones, maybe even high-contrast
duotones with interesting color combinations common in the
50s and 60s, but not blue as in the Day Keene or green as
with the Gold Medal Trio. Another example: the nickels on the
cover of Rabe's Murder Me for Nickels were a too obvious
choice, but even so, older buffalo nickels would have given
the cover more of a older, nostalgic feel, even though the
nickels used were contemporary to the book. All in all, the
SH covers are gradually getting better. The designer is
learning his trade with each cover. You can still get good
cover art on a budget. I do it with the design of CD covers
all the time.
Designers should also keep in mind that original cover art
can be used as long as they get rid of any logos. Under the
old copyright laws, cover art could not be copyrighted.
Jeff
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 26 Jun 2008 EDT