Mike contacted me in the middle of Covid (July 2020) for help with his book cover and epub. I had worked with his daughter previously (not Bianca Smith) on a branding project, and she referred him to me to work on the Book Cover Design for The Rainbow Revolution.
The scope for this project was to design the full cover spread and prepare it for ePub for Mike to upload to Amazon and elsewhere. He also ordered a redraw of his Knights Publishing logo for better quality.
The Rainbow Revolution is set in South Africa. The subtitle reads, “A Russian nuclear colossus, a corrupt state president, and a desperate struggle to save a failing country”.
While this isn’t a fiction genre I would personally pick to read, I did read it before working on any designs for the cover.
For more details, here’s the blurb:
A self-exile is lured back to a democratic South Arica facing economic meltdown. Only removal of the corrupt government can save the country. Rossouw is a target for recruitment, his outstanding military achievements in the Anglo Bush War not forgotten by his old commanding officer. The retired colonel now heads a clandestine revolutionary movement intent on overthrowing the government and displacing a president living comfortably in the pocket of shady Russian corporation, Nuclatom. The corporation has bribed its way to secure a state contract for the supply of six nuclear power stations. Ivashchenkov, the unprincipled CEO, will go to any length to keep the president in office and ensure he perfects his mega-deal. He becomes the deadly nemesis of Rossouw and the movement.
Like an idiot, I didn’t save Mike’s initial project brief, so I can’t actually remember what it was. But I do still have on file the sample covers he had attempted to build himself, but wasn’t 100% happy with.
A problem to be solved
A number of his covers had a version of the South African flag that was damaged or looked like it had been burnt, with other elements like chess pieces, a rainbow, and cooling towers (all stock images taken from Google). My primary concern was that the South African flag is a copyrighted national asset and can’t be used for sale on a product for profit (a book is a product) without licence. It is especially not legalised for use in a way that represents it as defaced (you can read more about this here).
So, off I went to visit my divergent thinking process and come up with a way to use the flag that would work for the cover and wouldn’t get us into trouble.