This thread is to share and discuss:
- Tips you have for creating 'good' cover art, and what that means.
- Share your cover to get feedback or just for fun!
- Provide feedback on other people's cover art.
- What tools do you use to make your art? What was your artistic vision?
Quick rule: If you are posting your cover to request feedback please explicitly say that. If a person has not asked, then don't give it.
How to ask for feedback
Placing my research hat on for a moment to give some general advice on how to get good "user insights" when asking for feedback: The way you ask for feedback or opinions matters. If the questions is too open it's really easy for people to focus on whether they personally like something. This can create two possible issues:
- They may not be your target audience, so their personal taste may not be relevant.
- Most of us are people pleasers to some extent, and if you ask something like "is this good?" people can be pretty quick to say "yes" without giving anything useful. This is more of an issue in person though than online (especially with friends or family).
If you're asking for feedback ask yourself why. What do you want to find out? Then form a question from there.
Examples you can use
If you want to know whether the cover represents the story well enough try:
"What do you think this story might be about?"
"What kind of setting or genre might it have?"
"How does this cover make you feel?"
"What kind of tone do you think this story has?"
If you want to know whether it looks good as a piece of graphic design, you could ask that directly. But if you're having trouble getting useful info you could probe with some more practical prompts such as:
"What does the title say?"
"What do the images on my cover look like to you?"
"If you saw this in a bookstore would you pick it up?"
^ You also might want to try these ones with small versions of the cover (scaled down to the tapas size used on mobile).
This isn't to say any specific thing is right or wrong for the design itself, just some ideas for how to get useful information out of people. Especially people outside of this sub who may be less familiar with thinking about what goes into a cover design. Hope it helps!
Anyway share away 
and feel free to link to your story.
