Designer: Tania Fitzpatrick, Red Dot Design

The Brief
Fit to Succeed is a book that demonstrates how companies can reduce health care claims and insurance costs by encouraging health and wellness in their employees. The lessons are conveyed through a story about two fictional CEOs in the construction industry — an industry the author had worked with extensively.

The cover brief began with six key words: Fitness, Healthy, Strong, Company, Growing, Construction.

The Concepts

	Cover A combined a number of the key word elements. The tall building represents the corporate world, and the orange and yellow color scheme are drawn from the construction industry. The tape measure cinching the building stood in for both construction and fitness. But the cinching of the building created a feeling of budgetary belt-tightening and reduction that contradicted the sub-title of “driving profits.”
	Cover B used just the tape measure and a variation on the orange-yellow palette. Note that the sub-title was still in development at this stage, so different ones were being mocked up on the covers. This cover lacked too many of the key word elements — nothing here really spoke to fitness, health or strength. And at this stage, it was decided that visually tying the book to the construction industry was too limiting. Though the author used construction company executives as the protagonists in his story, the concepts he was conveying were applicable across every industry.
	Cover C changed things up with the introduction of an apple and a fresh green color, but the design looked too much like that of a food or cookbook. The corporate tie-in was missing.
	Cover D married elements of the earlier covers. The apple and green palette remained, and the tape measure was added back. Here, though, combining the tape measure with food spoke to dieting, and the book was about a much broader approach to health than just weight loss. It was also felt that the diet imagery made the cover too feminine. By this time, the sub-title had been finalized.

The final cover, shown below, removed the tape measure and instead punched a dollar-sign bite mark out of the apple to make the corporate connection. Stronger shades added to the colour scheme helped ramp up the energy and visual impact. The result is a crisp, vibrant cover that matches the themes of the book.

Rate My Book Cover is a simple website that lets you view and rate cover designs on a scale from 1 to 10. I’d guess that most, if not all, of the covers are from self-published authors. You can even submit your own cover design if you’re interested in what others think.

I can’t say I agree with many of the rankings. Some downright hideous covers rank above 5 and some quite good ones are down in the 3s and 4s. I wouldn’t trust the feedback as market research into whether your design is any good or not — but the site is an interesting way to while away some time. Have a bit of fun with it.