“Can you throw together a quick redesign of this book cover before 5:00 this afternoon?” A friend of mine came over to my desk while I was working at IBLP HQ last month and handed me a small book. “It’s a book my father-in-law uses for his prison ministry and we would really like to print a few hundred off tonight before we head home for Thanksgiving tomorrow.”

I love rush projects because it means you do your best with what time you have and the recipient will be pleased with the result regardless of how I think it turns out. Well, this time both my friend and I were pleased with the result! Using a picture from an earlier project I was working on and using a free, homey font from dafont.com, I was able to throw this new cover design together just in time for the deadline. Well, close at least. I forget if it was 5:00 or 6:00 when I finished, but at least it was done in enough time for the books to be printed off that night!

Cover Spread

After

The font website I mentioned earlier has a great selection, but you will need to be careful not to accidentally download and install "for personal use only" fonts if you think you'll ever be doing non-personal work on that same computer. It would be difficult to keep track of. So, if you want a list of commercial use only fonts, here's a link to a blog post that lists 70 of the supposedly best.