Don Norman says that good design makes us happy.
He’s onto something, because I’m very, very happy. And I hope you are, too.
After 189 design entries, 50,000 social media impressions, 300 votes, and 4 finalists, we finally have 1 winning book cover design for Great Founders Write.
Winning Designer: Zealous
Here are the steps I took to crowdsource the entire process, and why I ultimately went against the crowd to make my final decision.
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1. Crowdsourced Design
I used 99Designs, an awesome design contest platform. My project yielded 189 design entries (the average contest in my pricing tier only get 25-30).
Having so many designs helped me to refine exactly what I was looking for.
How did I get 750% more designs than average? Three keys:
Early, often, and detailed feedback. Most of the designs were not very good, but a I gave feedback on every single one. Some designers submitted more than 15 designs based on my constant feedback.
I encouraged my best designers. One designer in particular, iDea Signs, submitted two early designs that were far-and-away more creative than the rest. They didn’t fit my style, but I told him how much I liked his work and asked him to submit more. Two of his designs ended up in my Top 3.
I compensated all my finalists. Contests are great for sourcing designs, but designers who don’t win end up doing a lot of free work. So I tipped all of my finalists. Technically, this isn’t allowed on 99Designs (in fact, three finalists declined), but it’s good to be good to your creators.
2. Crowdsourced Feedback (Taken with grain of salt)
Once I narrowed down the designs to my 10 favorite, I asked my friends on Twitter and LinkedIn to weigh in. And wow, you did! In total, I received more than 300 votes across multiple platforms and TON of great feedback.
In the past, I would have taken these results at face value, but this contest taught me a few things:
Polls are not reliable. While option A was most popular on Twitter, Option J was the winner on LinkedIn. What did they have in common? They were both the first picture shown on their respective platforms. Survey design is SUPER important, and social media polling is very limited in its ability to control for biases like this.
Data is not a deciding factor. Data is meant to inform decisions, not make the decision for you. To me, qualitative feedback was equally important as polling data. I used this feedback to inform my judgement, not make the judgement for me.
For reference:
3. Standing Out vs. Fitting In
My initial goal was to create a book cover design that fit in with other great business books like The Lean Startup, The Power of Habits, E-Myth Revisited, and Never Split the Difference.
Many of the final designs looked the part, especially these:
But once I met my goal of fitting in, I decided to aim for something higher: Standing out.
All the final designs were beautiful, interesting, and highly-professional. I took solace knowing I really couldn’t go wrong.
However, the winning design (which I’ll forever call Design G - its name in the contest) is different from any other business or writing book I’ve seen.
And I’m not just trying to be different for its own sake. It’s critical to my mission.
If this is to be a writing book that founders will actually want to read, it needs a cover that doesn’t look like all the others.
4. Design for the book I want to write
(To help me visualize the book covers in real life, I mocked them up on Amazon’s best sellers page.)
I surprised myself with the final deciding factor.
As I struggled to make up my mind, I put the covers away for a bit. When I looked at them again, something struck me:
Cover G made me want to write a very different book than the one I had started.
It promised a book that was timeless, succinct, and packed with principles for both writing and leadership.
That is the book I want to write.
So far, the first draft of Great Founders Write doesn’t live up to the promise of Cover G. But its an ideal worth striving for. Choosing this cover will force me to write a better book.
Other Things I Learned About Book Cover Designs
People don’t buy books based on the cover, but they’ll choose to NOT buy a book based on the cover.
When gathering crowd feedback, look for the most polarizing options. One person literally told me, “Cover G is the only book I would buy.” Again, stand out vs. fit in.
In the end, a great book will overcome a bad cover, and a great cover won’t save a bad book. Book covers are important, but not the end-all-be-all.
For everyone who participated in my book cover design journey, THANK YOU. Your feedback and support means the world to me.
If you enjoyed this post, please click the 🖤 and share with ONE friend! Thank you!