The Opportunity

Phil Marshall came to me by way of a mutual friend, with a unique project: Not just his debut novel, but a thrilling blend of action, comedy, and hard science fiction. The goal wasn’t simply to create a beautiful cover—though that was certainly the target—but one that would create a compelling visual identity for a thriving, complex fictional world.

Phil came to the project with a wealth of ideas but, in his own words, felt some apprehension about how the work might go. “I had no idea what to expect,” he shared in a post-project interview. “I worried that I had put too much material together to manifest my thinking, and then I worried I had put too little. I tend to exhaust people, but in the end, Jason took it all in stride and wrangled the key ideas into a wide range of great concepts.”

With Taming the Perilous Skies, Phil had broad launch plans, which meant a cover concept that would work well across multiple formats, from ebook and audio editions to paperback and hardcover designs.

The Approach

Every so often an author comes to the table with a wealth of context, and Phil brought quite a lot of material to the initial phase of the project. He shared a thorough breakdown of the book’s characters and their emotional arcs as well as details about the novel’s themes, settings, key events and set pieces—and even some of his own early thoughts about what the cover might look like.

My first step was to immerse myself in Phil’s extensive brief to understand not only the story, but more about Phil and how he saw this book as part of his own writing journey. It was as much a project about positioning him at the beginning of his career as it was about creating a marketable, gorgeous cover for the novel.

Because the novel explored a range of tones, from enormous moments of tragedy to hilarious moments of levity, I took a broad swing, exploring a wide range of potential directions.

“My early ideas were unruly, just aesthetic instincts, rough character images and scenes,” Phil explains, “and Jason didn’t just interpret them. He shaped them, sharpened them, and presented over a dozen design concepts that spanned the range of what I had hoped for and more. From there, he refined relentlessly, sanding and chiseling down to two radically different covers, each with its own soul, and each stunning.

Those two concepts quickly emerged as winners, and true to the novel’s dynamic story, each concept embraced a variation on the tone: The first concept embraced the novel’s characters, positioning the hero and his young son against the looming threat of a mad scientist billionaire, and the destructive impact of the scientist’s work upon the world; there’s grit and grain, bodies flung into the sky, and a wild, ominous orb shadowing it all. Meanwhile the second concept embodied almost the total opposite, using bright, contrasting colors, abstract imagery, and an almost jovial typographic treatment to suggest the absurdist elements of the story.

Phil chose both, with the intent of publishing the first cover widely, and offering the colorful alternate cover to Kickstarter supporters who have been closely connected to his publishing journey.

The Outcome

Again, I’ll let Phil summarize where it all landed: “Jason didn’t just make a great cover. He helped define the visual identity of a fantastic world.”

But…two covers?

“In the end, I couldn’t choose just one,” Phil admits. “Both will be used in different contexts, and both are far better than anything I could have imagined.” 

The final cover designs wrap Taming the Perilous Skies in a package that is bold, intriguing, and promises the reader the unforgettable adventure of Phil’s epic story, and even offer the reader a choice of how they’d most like to experience the story, from cover to cover.