Here are three suggestions for a cover that I just got from the art dept at Palgrave. I wonder which one I should choose?

I had an idea I wanted a peaceful, pretty, version of Yuanmingyuan to contrast with the often violent content of the book itself. I also don’t want a classical Chinese painting — covers like that are a dime a dozen. I really like picture in the middle, except that the house looks a bit too delapidated. What I want is Yuanmingyuan before the destruction. The cover to the right is out since it shows a building in the Forbidden Palace, not Yuanmingyuan. The cover to the left works, but since it is zoomed pretty heavily it looks a bit indistinct.

Diane doesn’t like the pink but I don’t mind. Admittedly it’s not a very Chinese color, but that’s sort of the point. I want to de-Orientalize the setting.

Another problem: there are too many words in the title. I wanted a colon between “Liberal Barbarism” and the rest, but Palgrave thinks that reduces the number of search results in Google or whatever. Perhaps there is a way to put “Liberal Barbarism” above the picture and the rest of the title below, in slightly smaller font.

Still, we’ll come up with something. This is good start 😉

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *