Confessions of a Closet Romantic was a podcast looking for retro paperback novel style cover art.
Confessions of a Closet Romantic is a podcast for lovers of the Romance genre, and the host wanted a cover to match. She envisioned a well-loved mass market paperback book with the podcast title on the front for her iTunes cover art.
Both the client and I are big fans of this aesthetic so we had no shortage of inspiration in mind. We were looking for a design that invoked the large type and flourishes of vintage novels, as well as a soft-focus exaggeratedly romantic feel overall.
We went through a few iterations but the design largely stayed the same: large text set in swash-y typeface on the cover of a creased paperback set on a cheesy backdrop of rose petals. I used lots of different texture, grain, stain, and grime overlays to achieve the look of a book that lives in the bottom of a purse. I topped the image off with a soft-focus filter and film grain for maximum haze. For the final design we landed on Caslon CP Swash for the font with a slight drop shadow for legibility, below.
