Welcome to the Cross-Product Creative Challenge. Thanks to everyone who participated in the Galactic Wildlife challenge. This one will demand a little more! The Challenge:Design the cover for a mystery novel, one that will stand out in a bookstore display. It can be noir, cozy, psychological, procedural, or 1930s pulp fiction. The exact genre is up to you. Guidelines: A prompt is not enough. Layer your assets and refine your composition. Treat Firefly as a collaborator, not a shortcut. Make it real. Include a title and author name, but no taglines or blurbs. It’s a Cross-Product Challenge! Use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Substance, Express—whatever tools help you build a compelling cover. Process matters. Include a brief description of how you created it. What tools did you use? How did you refine your idea? What choices did you make? This is how we share ideas and techniques. This example uses Firefly, FLUX.1 Kontext, Photoshop, Illustrator, Adobe Stock (the thumbprint), and of course InDesign.

Community Expert

Question

Cross-Product Creative Challenge #7: Mystery Story Book Cover

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
August 21, 2025
15 replies
2662 views

Welcome to the Cross-Product Creative Challenge. Thanks to everyone who participated in the Galactic Wildlife challenge. This one will demand a little more!

The Challenge:
Design the cover for a mystery novel, one that will stand out in a bookstore display. It can be noir, cozy, psychological, procedural, or 1930s pulp fiction. The exact genre is up to you.

Guidelines:

A prompt is not enough. Layer your assets and refine your composition. Treat Firefly as a collaborator, not a shortcut.

Make it real. Include a title and author name, but no taglines or blurbs.
It’s a Cross-Product Challenge! Use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Substance, Express—whatever tools help you build a compelling cover.
Process matters. Include a brief description of how you created it. What tools did you use? How did you refine your idea? What choices did you make? This is how we share ideas and techniques.

This example uses Firefly, FLUX.1 Kontext, Photoshop, Illustrator, Adobe Stock (the thumbprint), and of course InDesign.

fbeaume

Community Expert

I found this used book while cleaning out the attic... It's one of the best mystery books I've ever received for Christmas. After that, I never saw Christmas the same way again.

Workflow:
Scene and christmas ornament made with Firefly.
Everything has been pushed inside Photoshop for compositing work and to get the final background image.
Color Grading with camera Raw. Then, back to Photoshop for Title addition and Texturization

Monika Gause

Community Expert

That's a great composition. I love what you did with the light.

fbeaume

Community Expert

Thanks Monika! I appreciate!

Peru Bob

Community Expert

Started with the prompt "where is waldo" in firefly to get the cabin.

Then finished in Photoshop.

AlanGilbertson

Author

Community Expert

That's a truly awesome prompt to start with! Love it! Your author is clearly destined for fame and fortune.

barbara_a7746676

Community Expert

D

D. Humann

Community Expert

Given that I'm currently working on a game dev project and also reading a book about the history of Nintendo (entitled Super Mario by Jeff Ryan), I was inspired to take this challenge in a slighly different direction. Thus, my book cover is for: The Maltese Monkey which gives nods to The Maltese Falcon (a 1930 detective novel by Dashiell Hammett) and the beloved classic Mario franchises (Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. from Nintendo). In this story, Mario takes up the role as Sam Spade, Private Eye. He seeks to locate the missing statue of Donkey Kong and the culprits who stole it. His only clues are a smashed glass case that held the artifact and a note left at the crime scene with the words "The cake is a lie" scrawled on it.

For my initial design, I used Nano Banana and Photoshop to mock up my ideas. I eventually settled on the layout shown above. For the final scene I used various images and models (Firefly, Flux, Nano Banana) to generate elements of the scene which were composited in Photoshop. Final tweaks and color adjustments were made with Adobe Camera Raw. The Maltese Monkey logo was fleshed out in Photoshop and then brought to Illustrator where it was traced to create clean vector art. The elements were pulled together and the final cover design was created with Adobe Illustrator.

AlanGilbertson

Author

Community Expert

Damn, that's good! I wish I could give it extra upvotes. It's such a delightful mashup, and just brilliantly done as always. I can totally see this as a new Mario game or a Netflix show. You should pitch it!

D

D. Humann

Community Expert

Haha! Thanks, Alan. I appreciate the kind words.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Having Firefly render a night train compartment (don't ask, it just doesn't know anything about trains, just as if the Orient Express never existed). And then having it render a dagger. Combining that in Photoshop and then autotracing the thing in Illustrator to get a cheap look like a 1960ies detective novel. Borrowing the typography from 1960ies western genre novel though ‌😄‌

AlanGilbertson

Author

Community Expert

Awesome, Monika! That's a brilliant idea, to image-trace it in Illustrator so as to grunge it up, which I just added to my collection of fabulous techniques to remember!

I don't know about the train. It does look reminiscent of an old-fashioned train compartment, but it's kind of a hybrid. There are hints of luxury sleeping trains, but the layout looks like British Railways (as it was then called) individual compartments that were common until the 1960s. A carriage was divided into compartments with facing seats and an exit door at each end. No corridor. I don't think British trains have those anymore, and I don't believe European trains ever did. But, yes, Firefly has its quirks, for sure!

Monika Gause

Community Expert

That was the layout of German nighttrains until the 2000s (when they abandoned the service), then ÖBB continued with the same carriages. Around the 2000s they also had a double decked layout and nowadays that also have those single pods. But still those 4 and 6 persons compartments exist on the EU mainland.

American carriages had this layout as in "Some like it hot", but nowadays have smaller compartments as well. That layout was what Firefly gave me initially and I had to describe the compartment in order to get it.

@mj

Community Expert

Tx @AlanGilbertson for the cool challenge

Made with all-natural ingredients.

1 &1/4 cup of Firefly
Place in a glass bowl and mix well in Express
Add a generous serving of blur in Ps
Bake in a pre-heated Id for 30 minutes at 180

fbeaume

Community Expert

That sounds like a good recipe!

EuanWilliamson

Community Expert

Stock images, Firefly gens, generative fills, new text boxes, masks and magic!

Best regards, Euan.

AlanGilbertson

Author

Community Expert

Sweet! That's such a good way to make the concept self-referential.

derekwatson

Community Expert

Started in Firefly (tested the various models and Firefly won!) to create the creature, moved to Photoshop on the web and then Mac, added the various connectors, then the eyes and hand and used a background image to increase the mess. Stayed in Photoshop to test the updated type tools.

Derek Watson

AlanGilbertson

Author

Community Expert

This made me truly laugh out loud! Love the humor! Thanks for brightening my day, Derek.

O

Oh.N8

Tentacles of Silence by Jelly Ranger

FF Jelly fish dock
Adobe Stock: Shelly (free)
Adobe Fonts: Font styles
PS colour mode blending & text
Express: QR code & Barcode
@J E L for the concept of a finished product.

Sk. Arif Hossain

Participating Frequently

I guess, there is a typo: Shelly or Jelly is the writer

Sk. Arif Hossain

O

Oh.N8

Hey Arif,
It was supposed to be a "ghost writer's name" and playing w the Jelly Fish concept as a name.

C

Christelle RD

Community Expert

In this project, I used Fresco, Illustrator, Photoshop and Adobe Stock.

The illustration had already been done on Fresco for last Halloween. I wanted to give it a second life. I dream of doing book covers and book illustrations, I enjoyed so much that challenge!

This book would belong to a Myths and Legends of the World collection and would tell the story of how an ordinary young woman (in appearance) would be chosen by the yokai to be an intermediary between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead (inspired by In/Spectre), provided she agreed to sacrifice her right eye (reference to Odin, even though for him it was to know the future, and during the journey to Persephone and Eurydice: I like to see how similar myths and legends from different cultures can sometimes be).

Process:
- Woman painting done on Fresco and I generated the little butterflies in Photoshop.
- Sakura pattern design of the book spine and the artwork background made with Illustrator and turned into a pattern with Photoshop.
- Choice of a nice book mock-up on Stock with a thick, glossy cover.
- Use of Dynamic Text in Ps for the fake Editor logo.
- Symmetric layout to emphasize the missing eye (=> asymmetric face).