Makeover Monday: Game On

Today's Makeover Monday victim volunteer is another hockey romance writer—Jaymee Jacobs. Can you tell what genre I read and write in by now? Her teaser is for a book about a hockey player and a sports reporter.

Font-ain of knowledge

For me, fonts are the most difficult part of making a teaser. That's where a graphic designer's knowledge would really come in handy. Too bad I don't have any. I prefer fonts that are plain and easy to read. For teasers, I'll add in fonts that are popular now, like script or block capitals, just to give an on-trend look.

So I don't know fonts, but I know what I like. I'm not crazy about the font here, it looks like the handwriting of that perfect girl in the front row of the classroom. I find it unnecessarily curly. But I don't know what font would be better, so I'll experiment. I'm going to show you how the different iterations look.

First, I assessed the current teaser. While simple and legible, I think a teaser should have more emotional punch. Who is our heroine? What is she feeling?  From the quote, the heroine is ambitious, she's taking on a new job, and she's ready to work. So the emotion I decided to go with is a young woman ready to conquer a new city. I searched Deposit Photos for an appropriate photo and came up with this one. Audrey, the heroine is blonde and a reporter, so I settled on this photo. I like the sunlight and the woman looks right. Also, given that the photo is horizontal, I flipped the format of the original teaser to a horizontal justification.

Next, I plunked the photo into Canva and moved it around so I could see some sunlight and Audrey is central. I cut back on the quote. For teasers, I prefer a short, snappy quote. Some people write great hooky books that lend themselves to pull quotes. But most don't. If you have lots of dialogue and slow build-ups (like me!) perhaps a descriptive sentence would work better. For the first attempt, I used a plain, sans serif font. I also blurred the photo so the text would pop. The sentences highlighted in the first teaser are now the words that Audrey "speaks."

It looked okay, but I felt there was room for improvement. I switched to the font Prata. This is the font I used in the teasers I did for Jaymee before. When in doubt, use fonts you've used before. Own them, use them consistently—especially for your web address. It looks better, so I added the book cover back in, but it seems to stick out a little.

Well, if this was the high jump, I'd only be getting three attempts. But it's not, and I can play with teasers for hours if I want. Don't worry, I won't. We're getting closer.
My tip: work on your teaser, then go to bed and look at it in the morning. Fresh eyes help you to tweak the details.  I didn't like the way that the book cover sticks out like an afterthought, so I decided to try other ways of communicating the book title, while maintaining the fresh colour palette. And this time, I used a script font to communication Audrey's enthusiastic speech. Stronger, I like it! But I'm not as happy with the book title.

Okay, the final attempt! I added the cover back, but this time I filtered the photo so that it more closely resembles the colours of the book with navy and silver-blue. There's more than one way to make the cover match the teaser! In addition, the script on the cover works with the script of the quote. I've also moved the cover to touch the quote. That's another way to integrate elements in your teaser, by laying them out so there's harmony or unity. The white font needed a background to make it pop, so I went with a faded square. Transparency for the win!

Ideas to steal:
Experiment with many fonts, but keep it simple.
Integrate your cover with the teaser.
Step away from the graphic... and return later.

What do you think? We lost some of the hockey message from the original, but we gained in emotional expression. Better? Worse? Leave your comments and if you have a red-headed stepchild of a teaser you'd like to share for Makeover Mondays, let me know that as well.