WIP Yearbook Cover

It's been a long time since I posted something here... site is looking better now than before, and even though I have been doing some graphics work, I don't do many sigs and stuff like that anymore. Anyway, though, here's a cover I made for my generation's yearbook, as there will be a contest for deciding the cover for it. Here's my attempt:

 

U no do sigs anymore? You should keep 'em up. As for the yearbook, I once made a yearbook that wasn't so good lol. This looks good, generally yearbooks tend to have a photo or two, at least they have in my experience. The background reminds me of a one of those cliche portrait backgrounds, I guess that would be my only complaint. I like the color choice, font, etc.

I don't know, maybe I just haven't found much inspiration for sigs lately, I've been trying to expand my graphics-related horizons. I thought about adding a single picture of the campus but it messed up the color palette as well as the overall simplicity of the design, so I didn't put that in. I don't really know what you meant with the cliche background lol, but I appreciate your feedback. I'll find some inspiration for a sig soon, hopefully. CS6 alone makes me excited to work in graphics with these amazing new features it has.



ok dont get me wrong because it already looks pretty cool,
but im gonna nitpick at it just to give more feedback.

the background - it looks cool and textured and stuff, but then theres certain parts of it where it looks blurry and runny, as if liquify and blur tool. it was throwing my eyes off a bit. I think that the blur should be uniform. if the background part is behind everything, put a slight blur over all of it, not just the runny parts.

also, the part where the green lines cross the spine of the book, i think it might be cool if they actually go behind that layer instead of over it. so the spine of the book would be relatively clean looking, but it would still have that wraparound feel.

also i dont like the size of the word "presents"
i feel like maybe the school name should be larger, then presents smaller, then class of 2012 the same as it is now?

it is great, but i would want to see a few different versions trying out some tweaks to it. nice work!

First off, I did not blur any part of the background at all. I made a gradient over the entire picture and then applied a pattern overlay at 80% opacity so it didn't look too false. I didn't really get what you meant with the line going behind the layer in the spine. It does run below the spine layer, that's why you see the line in a slightly darker hue than in the front and back covers. Lastly, the "presents" has to be that size in order to fit with the typographic text I used, and if I changed the font to make it smaller it would ruin the whole thing.

I made a different cover but it was super clean and simple, I felt this one was way better and was the one I submitted. Sadly, I think I might lose to another that in my opinion looks botched and thrown together haphazardly.

Alas, it's the people's choice... what can I do?