Since I can’t do Instagram easily, I figure I’ll post some of the covers and what I’ve learned about cover design here. First of all, I wanted to go into video game covers. I started by looking at the ones on my shelf.
I don’t have that many anymore, but these ones caught my eye first, for different reasons. I wanted to look into it a bit more, so I looked up some popular culture games, to see what they looked like.
I noticed a trend. It even continues back, with older games.
A few articles I found dove into this trend, of having the main hero stand center screen, in some powerful pose. The other big trend is close-ups.
So I thought about how to make them better. The ones on my shelf varied in success, but few had the same cover repetitiveness I saw online. Oblivion’s game box was boring and flat. I don’t even really know if the symbol in the center has any meaning. The other four, however, were better. I really liked the use of horror tropes in Left 4 Dead and Silent Hill Homecoming’s covers.
The severed hand holding up the number 2 was a clever tie in to the name, a reference to the first game’s cover, and showcased the zombie element well.
However, Silent Hill’s cover doesn’t suit its’ actual game play at all. The cover feels like it belongs on the front of a game about a haunted house, not the city-crawling physiological cultist horror that Silent Hill uses.
Persona 4’s box art really stood out, with the sectioned off areas, bright colors, and artistic layout, the cover really felt like “art” in a way that not many of the others did.
This didn’t help with the fact that I would need to remake a cover, as it only showed me either what would be my starting place, or my ending place. So I looked more, and I found something interesting. Ico, in it’s original Japanese release, had a different cover. As well, it had a book.
All of these covers seemed more interesting than the one used in the American release of the game, but also gave me a reference point for two, more even, ways to do the same game cover.
A Matter of Course 
Julia, just another quick note that I have you down 20/20 for the “Instagram” posts. Dang, I wish you could post these because they are so cool, I’m sure folks would be following your posts. I think also checking hashtags with some of these games on Instagram would produce lots of ideas to work with in terms of images and design you could draw on. That said, I encourage you to use Google images to research the game you choose, and draw inspiration from what you see there.
Good job collecting these pieces in this “gallery” you’ve put together.
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