I got an interesting job request to update a nonfiction biography about Peter Hunt, a white slave from Mississippi in the 1800s. The author is a descendant and has done a ton of research that earned her a position of finalist at the Indie Book Awards. You can order the book on Amazon.

The challenge was getting a high resolution image of Peter Hunt, since the image we had to work with was only 2 inches tall and wouldn’t print at a full bleed like we wanted. I ended up running it through an AI-powered photo enhancer to upscale and sharpen some of the details that were lost. Although not a perfect restoration by any means, it gave us a place to start with.

The author also wanted to keep the words from the original cover (see below) because they spoke to important elements within the book, as well as continue to use the color red in the design. I figured that I could keep the hallmarks of her original design while updating it to appeal to most readers.

To do that, I switched to a more historical handwritten font and scattered her words into the background so it was almost a pattern, pulling certain words forward and interacting with Peter Hunt’s headshot. To incorporate the red, I pulled important words like “freedom” forward and colored them to stand against the others, creating more interest.

Ultimately, the author was extremely happy with the final design, and we even received an Indie Book finalist award for the cover design, in addition to her previous award.

Below you can see the original cover beside with the updated one.