designing the cover

While contemplating different cover designs, the idea to use the image of the Japanese flag as the backdrop came to me when I noticed that the dimension ratios for a standard novel are the same as a flag (3:2).

I wanted to create an original type font that would grab the readers’ attention while preserving a Japanese feel (there are many fonts on the market that mimic Chinese characters, and that’s not what I was after). There are three main scripts in the Japanese writing system:

kanji, taken from chinese characters

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hiragana, an alphabet used to write ‘Japanese’ words

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katakana, an alphabet used to write ‘foreign’ words

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Since I was writing ‘foreign’ English words, it was logical to use the katakana script as a base for my personal font.

I first took characters that looked similar to English letters, and used them directly in the book title.

For the other letters, I took pieces of different character strokes, and brought them together to create the remaining letters in the title.