Become SMARTYR Not a MARTYR – Book Cover Illustration

I was commissioned by authors Deborah Kerr and Riz Virdee to illustrate the front and back cover of their self-hypnosis book, Become SMARTYR Not a MARTYR. They felt my doodle art style aligned with the book’s themes of subconscious healing, transformation, and playfulness and asked me to weave in specific symbols from their soul contract system throughout the design. The background is made up of hand-drawn doodles, layered with meaning. Hidden within are soul contract symbols chosen by the authors, intended to speak to the subconscious in the same way the book’s hypnotic scripts do. We collaborated on the composition, colour palette, and text layout. After experimenting with several colourways, we chose bold CMYK primaries, yellow, cyan, and magenta, to help the book pop on shelves and convey clarity, energy and optimism. I created the design in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet, drawing everything by hand. The biggest challenge was getting the balance right between text readability and the doodle background. The authors selected the clean, bold font to help communicate their message clearly while keeping the overall feel visually exciting. The book is now published and available on Balboa Press, Amazon, and Waterstones. It was an amazing opportunity to bring together visual art, intuitive symbolism and commercial design and it’s a piece I’m genuinely proud of.