Pandion Cover Story
Who’ll Stop the Rain – The Cover
Pandion started with a an idea about a young man who grew up spending his summers on a family estate on the coast of Maine, named for pandion haliaetus, the scientific name for the western osprey or sea hawk. On 99designs.com I ran a design contest in which I asked cover designers to come up with their own conceptions, but I provided images of great houses similar to the house on the Pandion estate, the Maine coastline, and the osprey image I intended use as a frontispiece and logo. But first I enlisted the help of an artist friend, Lorenzo Contessa, to create the logo.
First logo design
The design went through more revisions than Lorenzo probably cares to remember until we agreed on the final version:
The final logo
Along with this osprey image, I submitted a design brief that included images of the southern coast of Maine, including those above, and models for the Foresters’ house. Graphic artists from around the world submitted numerous cover designs, including:
Mikhail Starikov d/b/a michaelstar* had created the cover for my second novel, Backstory, in 2021 and in the course of finalizing that design he and I corresponded about the cover as well as about politics, Tolstoy, St. Petersburg and the Napoleonic War of 1812.
But Mikhail lives in Moscow, and the sanctions imposed upon Russia following its invasion of Ukraine prohibited me from making payments into Russia and barred him from participating in a 99designs contest. I nonetheless sent him a courtesy copy of the design brief. Mikhail confirmed he could not work with 99designs, but he sent some designs to me directly just to keep his hand in this kind of work:
I love Mikhail’s artistry and his dedication to his craft, but in the end chose a design by Cèsar Pardo, of Peru. Cèsar’s design underwent numerous revisions, ending with the final cover:
And now Cèsar’s cover has travelled the world:
Barbiano, The Dolomites, Italy
Berlin, Germany
Paestum, Italy
Thank you to all the designers who participated in the contest, and especially to Lorenzo and Cèsar for putting up with all my changes to produce the final cover.