On Covers & Quicksilver
I want to say up front that I don’t agree with the backlash this author - or any author for that matter - is experiencing due to their cover. It would be a better world if we could all handle such situations the mature way - burying the disappointment deep inside ourselves and then spending too much money online trying to obtain a different/older edition.
I’m not writing this to encourage hate towards anyone involved (stop doing that shit you’re making us all look bad), but because I’m annoyingly obsessed with art and design and after too many years of art education I can’t help but analyse it all the time. And no one IRL will listen to me so I have to let it out somewhere.
So, lets have a conversation about Quicksilver in two covers. I’m going to try and make sense but I’m rusty and I’m not quite sure how to make this analysis flow well - if you have any questions please feel free to ask me on social media. These are all only my thoughts and opinions.
And full disclosure - I’ve not read ‘Quicksilver’. I’m approaching these covers from the perspective of a prospective buyer, seeing these in a shop with no prior knowledge of the book beyond what I’m seeing.
The OG Cover
I’ve seen people being dismissive about this cover because it very much looks like some kind of stock photo/art mashup, but I think it’s one of the more cohesive attempts at this in indie publishing. It’s very clear a lot of effort went into creating this image and the design feels very intentional and planned rather than just “we had these three stock images and thirty minutes". Is it a bit cliché? Maybe, but it’s a very thin line between cliché and using well-established visual language to quickly and easily communicate information without the viewer even really noticing it. Which is to say you can call it cliché but it works.
The overall composition of the piece is very pleasing. A good rule of thumb is to stick a grid on it and consider the rule of thirds. Obviously, all rules can be broken but in general it really pays to pay attention to how and where you place things within a whole design. For example this cover is very heavy on the bottom two thirds, but opens up at the top which lets the piece as a whole breathe. Sometimes something stands out better for the absence of something else. If you fill a whole space the eye can struggle to know where to start and end, whereas the composition here tells you to look at the bottom two thirds first of all. What’s there? The focal point of the artwork (the character) and the book’s title. If someone’s eye is drawn to one thing on your cover it’s pretty great if it’s the title of the book. Even the arms of the figure are forming a triangle, leading the viewer’s eye to the title.
While I’m talking about the title I’ll make a quick diversion to talk about font and colour. The choice of the title font is elaborate and eye-catching. It’s light-coloured in a portion of the image that’s dark so it stands out even better. The font choice is quite ornate and evocative of fairy-tale books - communicating without needing to be picked up that this is a fantasy novel. This is what I mean by giving you information you may not be consciously aware of.
It also helps that the text on the cover is well spaced out. The text isn’t squashed together so it has room to breathe and it’s not fighting against each other to be seen. The top of the design uses the inverse of the bottom - the authors name in a dark colour against the lighter area so that it equally stands out in it’s own right. When you glance at this cover you stand a good chance of picking out either the name “Callie Hart” or the title “Quicksilver”, which - even if you walk away at that moment - is a victory in terms of the cover’s purpose.
Right, back to the art. The colour choices for this cover are really harmonious. Blue and green go together extremely well, but then it’s a really smart choice to use another blue-adjacent colour (purple) to add pops of colour that break up the monotony. They’re eye-catching while not feeling too obnoxious or completely separate from the rest of the design. Butterflies as imagery are also very softening. The butterflies in here are giving what could’ve been a hard image (tattooed man with a sword) a gentleness that to me is informing the consumer that this is going to be more of a romantic fantasy than a blood and guts one.
I think it’s a very smart choice to have a character front and centre of the composition. Humans are naturally fascinated by humans. We’re trained from the earliest stages of life to recognise people and expressions, so the moment we see a face we can’t help but look at it and try to read it. It also helps give a sense of what the book is about - again without needing someone to pick it up and read the blurb. We have immediate questions about this character. Who are they? Where are they? Why are they crying? What are they crying? Why does he have a sword? Questions make people want to know more. Questions will make someone pick the book up to learn more and potentially get invested enough to purchase.
The New Cover
So why is this cover so disliked? Obviously nostalgia can play heavily into that kind of fan reaction. I don’t doubt there are thousands - more likely hundreds of thousands - of people with that original cover on their bookshelves already. Maybe as a lock screen on their phone or Kindle, or all over some other kind of merch or craft they’ve made themselves.
But as someone who doesn’t have that nostalgia I also felt a bit perplexed with the choices made in the design for traditional publication.
To start with some compliments - black and silver is a classic colour combination, and obviously lends itself to the idea of qucksilver. Likewise the font itself is really appropriate, It’s like looking at liquid mercury, which again goes well with the mental association of quicksilver.
But - fundamentally - what am I looking at? At a distance the composition as a whole is one blob of text, taking up all the available space. There’s no separation between the author name and title, there’s no space at all. It’s a very suffocating design.
I think it’s a mistake to have the author name literally melting into the book’s title, unless it’s being named to “CALLIE HART QUICKSILVER”, which I can’t completely rule out in the era of “AS SEEN ON OPRAH, THE TIKTOK SENSATION” being inserted into every bestseller’s name on Amazon. (Please forgive this slight tangent).
The biggest problem with this redesign is that it’s designed with the assumption that you already know what it is. It’s coasting on the assumption that someone will see the name “Callie Hart” or “Quicksilver” and already know everything they need to to make a purchase, but - as has been proven again and again - the internet is vast but it’s also an echo chamber.
The pure black background gives no indication of the books content, genre, or setting. The only flourish of decoration is a single snowflake, that still means nothing to me and I’m sure I read the blurb for this at least once.
I know this is a fantasy book because I’m terminally online, but look at it with the eyes of your parent/grandparent/only-vaguely-listening partner. Silver metal text on a black background gives me serious murder mystery vibes - a James Patterson, perhaps - with the snowflake indicating a winter setting. Sure, you’ll find it shelved in Sci-Fi and Fantasy, but imagine this stacked on a table at the front of the shop with no other context clues and would you guess fantasy? Romantasy? Would you guess Fae?
It’s not giving you enough of anything to draw you in, it’s not giving you any information to pique your interest. It’s like the way my eyes glaze over when I pass a table of political autobiographies, if there’s nothing on your cover to indicate this is a genre I read instead of a genre I don’t I will continue bee-lining it to my trusted sections without even noticing it.
The problem with this redesign is it seems to have been designed with the belief that the name alone is enough - that consumers will see that and know it by reputation. Which, of course, the fans will. Except the fans don’t seem to like or want this edition. And then the design provides nothing for a layman to be enticed by. It’s a strange choice. I’m sure it’ll still sell gangbusters, but it does feel like a little bit of missed opportunity.
Personally - and this is pure conjecture - I wonder if they came across some kind of rights/licencing issue with any of the components of the original cover, that necessitated this change. But that’s purely me thinking out loud. I’m not saying that no redesign could have worked, I just don’t quite understand why they went for this one. It feels like a very confident design, but regrettably not a very artistic one.
