I happened upon this Teachers Pay Teachers author today and was super impressed by how ridiculously good-looking her resources are, so I thought I’d share. A short while ago, I dared everyone to consider getting rid of the chevron and frames, creating images that feel modern like secondary-level kiddos, and letting our images and words breath with some white space around them. I want to share someone who’s doing it right.
Meet B’s Book Love. And check out her Teachers Pay Teachers store!!!

Here’s a screenshot of her storefront.

So let’s look at a few images up close and discuss.

• The title is clear and large enough.
• The title is in a font that feels Native American-ish (don’t yell at me for stereotyping) 🙂
• There is a logical flow for us to “read” the image. Let me try to predict how you “read” this image … (1) You looked at the title. (2) You looked at the headdress. (3) You looked at the feathers on one of the arrows and followed them in to the 3 lines of text. … This is very very strategic, sparse, attractive, effective, and gives the feels.
• The background is totally unique to the feeling of this unit. Chevron and frames are usually a waste because they do nothing to get your shopper to “feel” anything.

•  Notice how this image feels different from the first one. It’s got an old style to it. Loving the old portrait style with the faded outline around the dude.
• The direction of his look is inward to the right, leading us to “read” the image up the hearts and to the “Romantic or Realist.”
• The Romantic and Realist have fonts that represent the feelings of those words. Good stuff. Borderline too many fonts here with 3 different ones (title, Romantic, Realist), but I think this works this time.
• And she avoided the temptation to fill in the white space in the corners. It lets it breathe.

• I’m totally loving the feeling of this. Lamb to the Slaughter all over this image.
• The font is pretty rugged for this kind of a story.
• I love the ribbon concept.
• Love the Red Riding Hood figure in the background with the white space inside.
• The colors are solidly used.
• Things I might suggest for improve…I can’t really tell what the thing is between the two story titles. And I think it’s eating up some valuable white space on this image. The blood splatters are great, but I think they would pop even more with a little less clutter up in the titles. This is a small thing because this is still a solid representation of what compels the modern secondary world.

• This is so simple and simply great.
• The title even gives me the feeling of flies. I think it’s something about the empty space between the letters. Normally, hollowed-out letters fall a bit flat on covers, but this time it works fantastic.
• Love the tape marks across the corners.
• Love the simple island with the soft edges that don’t feel like a stock photo pasted on the grungy white paper. The photo feels a part of the scrapbook. Good stuff.

Hopefully, some of these thoughts spark some image soul searching for y’all out there and lead to some effective product cover revisions. These are, of course, just our thoughts. But we thought we’d share them for anyone who’s looking for some new thoughts on the secondary cover mindset.
Go check out B’s Book Love and her Teachers Pay Teachers store!!!
Keep on being awesome!