This month, Michelle Argyle at Melissa Williams Design reimagines the cover of The Five-Year Marriage by Annmarie Kelly.

To submit a book for a free cover redesign, email us at booklifeeditor@booklife.com.

Design Note 1: The author felt the original cover was outdated. To create a more contemporary-looking cover, I decided to use an illustration, which is popular right now in publishing.

Design Note 2: Showing faces in the illus­tration helps make the cover image feel more personal.

Design Note 3: It was fun to pull the purples into this new cover so it still feels cohesive with the old cover—often a good idea when a book has already been published for a long time, as this one has.

Design Note 4: Using a script font for the title eliminates the stiffness of the old cover, as does using a new subtitle to give a better idea of what the book contains.

Original Cover