Given the uneven rollout of these Dozen Days and the fact that the book is out and has been plastered all over social media lately (to my great delight, thank you everyone for posting your pictures!!), calling this a cover reveal is probably a bit misleading. Let’s call it a cover review.
Note: the following is copied from my Kickstarter updates, posted on August 17, 2023
Cover reveals are exciting, no doubt, but they also feel fraught to me. They’re your book’s first introduction to the world and you hope it makes a good impression. But forget even a “good” impression, at the most basic level you have to start with knowing what impression it is you want to make.
I had this idea I wanted to do something with a donut-shaped planet. It would be our Earth floating in the empty vastness of space, but we’d be together, safe, united by our love for warm obloid pastry. I was pretty certain this is the vibe I wanted and I made the following donut, intending to paste it against a starry background.
It’s cute but it wasn’t doing it for me. Not in a cynical “the world is more of a burnt Pop-Tart” sense, mind you, just in that this concept didn’t match the content of the book. Despite the pink-frosting clouds (which I love), the energy in the piece felt kind of low. The book, I believe, is more exciting than what this cover promises.
As I thought about it, my mind kept going back to this image, a collage I did with a group of fourth graders five and a half years ago.
I love the energy in this piece and I could imagine an explosion of donuts (and words) working as an exciting cover. I did a sketch:
I liked this and appreciated that it felt connected to one of my favorite donuts in the book (Galaxy Donut). Not to mention the Big Bang metaphor felt appropriate as this whole project grew out of something very small (a tweet). Still, I couldn’t bring myself to move on the final art. I might have been dispirited by my first failed attempt, or maybe I knew there was a better idea waiting. Whatever it was, I did another sketch.
Now THIS… I knew this was exactly the direction I wanted to go. A box, a gift. Surprises within. It’s also a direct reference to the start of the project, the original dozen donuts I bought on that fateful morning last June. My mind was set.
It would take me a short while to figure out how best to execute the illustration. In the end, I composed the picture digitally. These are all my original painted papers but I scanned them as full sheets and collaged them digitally. This is the only piece in the whole book created that way and I did miss working with knives and glue but I knew I had so many elements going on in this image that I needed the flexibility of an adjustable image. Each element (title, donuts, box, background) exists on its own layer and can be edited individually. Here’s a week or more of of that process condensed into half a minute.
Totally worth it. I mean that honestly, no snark. I couldn’t be happier with how this turned out and I hope you are too.
Want to hold this cover in your hands? Pick up your own copy of DONUTS FOR EVERYBODY here!