Two book cover concepts were submitted for a vegan cookbook cover design contest by Yes I'm a Designer. Parameters of the competition included: the title "My Vegan Kitchen", layout designs with a front panel, spine, back panel and optional front/back wraps. Illustrations, stock photography or generated images could be used as well. The style needed to incorporate a natural, organic and earthy tone, with a target audience of vegan eaters aged 16+ years olds who want to cook healthy food on a budget.
CONCEPT #1: Minimal and eye-catching
Concept #1 book cover design mockup in a bookstore.
Using a stock image of a completely vegan burger, I liked the clean layout and minimal background that placed all focus on the burger with avocado "buns". Going off the look and feel of the stock image, I decided to balance the heaviness of the photo with bright colors inspired by the colors in the burger. Veering away from too much green, I picked the magenta colors from the red cabbage and orange from the sesame seeds. I wanted to give an eccentric and fun vibe to show that vegan cuisine can be extraordinary and exquisite.
Final wrap-around cover design with added summary and sleeve copy as placeholder using edited Chat GPT descriptions.
Concept #2: Using food ingredients as part of the title design
A mockup of the book on display in a bookstore.
Original photo taken in my kitchen with lentils on a cutting board ad letters drawn out with my finger.
Isolating some stock vegetables to place on the cutting board
Next, I created the base image in Photoshop: diving "Vegan" into two levels in order to fit onto the cover space, adding vegetable layers over the cutting board and the words "My" and "Kitchen" to the lentils in Bobby Jones Soft Regular font, in a dark brown color to match the cutting board.
