Here it is, the final, final cover. Amazingly, after all the many versions, we got the ‘stare’ illustration from design number four to translate. And…we got to keep the orange as well.

None of it had anything to do with me. Mike went back and traced that original sketch as carefully as he could, building a tighter drawing, layer after layer. I’m thrilled with the results. I feel like I got the strongest elements from each of the better designs. Also, this concept travels well to the other books in the series. A different character will be on every cover. And when I shift in time, each era will be represented by a separate color.

I couldn’t be more happy.

So the planet was removed, and then I really got into the weeds. I drove Mike nuts trying to get the building to intersect properly (in my mind) with the Collective logo in the background. Seeing it now, I’m still struggling with it. This was supposed to be the design, but something was gnawing inside of me. We had to to take a step back and look at what we’d done before…and we did. What we found led us to the final version.

I was watching while Mike came up with this one, almost inadvertently it seemed. I was blown away. The design is incredible, one of the best I’ve ever been associated with. I think the orange is stunning. I wanted to go with it so badly, but dammit…I didn’t want the planet in the background. My reasons were mostly story related, and maybe I can go into that at a later date. Anyway, Mike deserves kudos for this one.

This was a move in a totally new direction. I loved it at the time, but the concentric lines were vibrating like crazy at smaller sizes. Since In a Flash is the first part in a series, future covers would need to look similar, so this would have remained a problem from now till the end of time. We had no other choice. It was back to the drawing board.

As you see, we couldn’t give up on the last one, not right away. This version has a similar image with a different title treatment. The logo itself is a custom typeface that first reared its head here, and soon became a constant in the design process.

I have no real objection to anything in this layout beyond the fact that it reminded me of the comic book work Mike and I used to do. In the end, I think it’s just too scene oriented for me. Another few tweaks followed, but eventually, I knew, it was time to move on.

This version came out of the stylized attempts, too. Yet, to me, its more scene oriented. The illustration itself is a variation on a title page we did for an earlier, web version of the story. I like the emotion of it, and the overhead angle, but the way the type read always gave me problems. It seems too energetic, almost as if it belonged on a high-octane adventure story. Overall, this was a hard one to give up on. It’s really powerful.

Another stylized attempt. I like that the title is being used as a single line, forcing it to be read as a complete thought. That’s something I can be pathological about. I obsess over how words look.

This was an attempt to move in a more stylized direction. By this point, we’d started using In a Flash—the actual title.

This one was the key, but we weren’t able to recognize that at the time.

It came from a sketch. Mike was testing out some new tools in Illustrator and whipped this out in a literal flash. I was struck by it immediately—the look in Tana’s eyes (the book’s main character) was perfect—a mix of shock and steadiness. I told Mike this was precisely what I wanted; all we needed was a tighter version of it. Unfortunately, there was the problem. In every other version Mike attempted we could never retain that look in her eyes. Frustration led us to move on…for the moment.

This one was definitely more in the character-driven vein, but I thought it leaned too far into romance territory. Still, the graphic approach was really working for me.