Click on the thumbnails to see how designer Michel Vrana turned up the heat on an amphibian in peril for the cover of Tom Rand’s Waking the Frog: Solutions for Our Climate Change Paralysis (ECW Press).

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FINAL. The final cover increases the contrast between the background colour and the steam, trades in the rolling boil for a bubbling one, and brings the vapour in front of the type. A white drop shadow helps to pull the title out from the background, the amphibian's angle is tweaked so it dangles more convincingly from the word frog, and the larger subhead fits more comfortably in the space around the frog's leg.

Waking the Frog

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3. Though the symbolic frog had its fans, the climber ultimately won out, and the publisher requested that the frog look more in peril. This treatment traded in a slightly cartoonish background for a more realistic one. Better, but the frog needed to look like it was in even more danger.

Waking the Frog

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2 a & b. Two other early comps involved the frog jumping out of frame, having already escaped the dangerous water, and a layout meant to evoke a caution sign with the image of a frog standing in for the word (my personal favourite from this round).

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1. The title of <i>Waking the Frog</i> is a warning, meant to evoke a metaphorical frog dumped into a vat of gradually warming water, slowly boiling to death without realizing it. The first approach to the cover featured a frog using the letters of the title as a means to escape the boiling water, which emphasized the idea of solutions that appears in the subtitle.

Waking the Frog

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