Fern Kupfer’s latest book, Strong Women in Chicago, was released today at Culicidae Press. We designed the cover and the interior during the last few weeks. The cover shows a view of the Chicago skyline from west of the Loop, where SWIC, the Strong Women in Chicago gym is located. We generated the skyline issue from our copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 by flying a prop plane towards downtown Chicago, freezing the action, and then positioning ourselves with the drone command to view the skyline visible on the cover. A barbell is balanced on the Willis Tower’s roof-top antenna, and a silver pendent of a fierce woman with an open mouth (its meaning will be known to readers of the book) hangs from the top of book cover.
We went through several iterations of the cover using different times of day and different sky covers but the author and a group of reviewers picked the cover that ended up on the released book.
Below are a few of the other versions.
