The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

Overview

For the launch of the US paperback version of Dawnie Walton's critically acclaimed debut "The Final Revival of Opal & Nev", Simon & Schuster sought to expand its shelf appeal beyond serious music enthusiasts to a broader audience, and to better engage a fiction market that is some 80% women (also we needed space for a wealth of blurbs, reviews, and accolades). After researching 70s album covers and studying the marketplace this novel would live in, we overlayed gradients to add more color with wheat paste textures and concert crowds to more subtly nod to the novel’s content. We didn't want to lose the drama of the original, so we kept the main jacket rich with warm colors and added an interior stepback with a strong, cool contrasting hue that would pop on store displays, and topped it with more modern typefaces while creating a color hierarchy — the title is in white to make it advance towards the viewer, while other text is darker to signify varying levels of importance. The paperback cover launched to much fanfare and can be found wherever paperbacks are sold.