The seven book covers for my serialized coming-of-age novel Meeting Dennis Wilson are all deliberately based on the cover designs of classic Beach Boys album covers.
In doing the designs (and yes, I did all of the cover design myself; like everything else in this process, it was a learning experience!), I wanted to emulate those album covers without directly ripping them off.
Designing each one of them was fun in its own way, from the time-consuming “fill in the blank boxes on the graph paper with color” for Book Six to taking the pictures for the mock-up postcards that I created for Book Four. As on the group’s early Capitol album covers, I even included the “file under” tabs at the top of the covers (for consistency with the whole series, I used those tabs in all the book designs, even those where the original albums didn’t have the tabs).
The only quirk of the design process that I couldn’t correct or control was that two of the books (one and three) were too slender to have spine type. Perhaps I should include a Sharpie with each of those books.
Like the story itself, the Meeting Dennis Wilson cover designs are not directly “about” the Beach Boys, but inspired by them… and people who like the group, I hope, will get it.
For those who don’t, though, this photo album shows you the book covers alongside the album covers on which the designs were based.
For more about Meeting Dennis Wilson, click here.
Max Harrick Shenk, writer 