Cover design for new Grand Cayman dive and snorkel guide

[AfterDark]

Never been to GC but option 3 makes it look very appealing as I'm sure it is!

 

[Jake 10]

Reef Smart is working on a second Cayman Islands guidebook focusing on Cayman Brac and Little Cayman and due for publication next year.

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question-just curious.
Cayman Island is well known for their stingrays (hence: Stingray City)... Would it be appropriate to add a stingray pic in one of the guidebook? Or is it already "over-used" in other Cayman advertisements?

 

[Ian Popple]

I think of these choices #1 makes the best book cover but I don't really like it. I don't think of Cayman as primarily wreck diving (or even like wreck diving too much) and would rather see something from nature. I like the idea of the silversides, but dislike that shot. It looks so artificial. .

I understand and agree. The Kittiwake is famous/iconic, but there's so much more to diving in Grand Cayman. The image of the silversides may look artificial, but it's 100% natural!

 

[Ian Popple]

Cayman is not wrecks, Cayman is not the Kittiwake. Cayman is the beautiful walls and reefs and the associated sea life. Why not a photo to reflect that? I voted for the silversides only because it was the best of poor choices.

I have 10 trips and nearly 200 dives off Grand Cayman. I dived the Kittiwake 3 times off the Cayman Aggressor in 2018, including a night dive. It is a mediocre artificial reef dive, I'm grateful it is next to the Sand Chute and some reasonable shallow reef.

Thanks for the feedback. We searched long and hard for images that show the great wall diving in Cayman, but none of the images we found quite worked as a cover. The most impressive shots were from too far away to work, or were landscape instead of portrait. Additionally, wall shots tend to have a diver (or fish) on one side of the image and a wall on the other. The image is therfore off balance and we can't make the writing stand out because you have blue on one side and a hard colour boundary on the other, which makes the title hard to read. For a decent cover shot, we need a subject that is relatively close to the camera with enough "balance" to make the writing "pop" - ideally a blue, or largely singular, colour as a background. It's not an easy task.

 

[Ian Popple]

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question-just curious.
Cayman Island is well known for their stingrays (hence: Stingray City)... Would it be appropriate to add a stingray pic in one of the guidebook? Or is it already "over-used" in other Cayman advertisements?

Very much over-used in my opinion. But we do have a number of shots inside of the stingrays.

 

[Altamira]

Although the Kittiwake is a more iconic dive site, Option 3 is more aesthetically pleasing and eye catching.

 

[Joneill]

Hi everyone. As many of you may already know, Reef Smart has been working on a Grand Cayman dive and snorkel guidebook for the past two years and we've finally reached the end of the production process. All that remains is to select an image for the front cover…and for this we’ll need your help! Please vote for the cover that you think best captures diving in Grand Cayman, or comment below on which one you this works best and why. The image with the most votes will be chosen as the cover of the guidebook, which is scheduled for publication in October. Thanks so much in advance for the feedback!

A little more info about the Grand Cayman guidebook: This is the fifth book in our dive and snorkel travel series, published by Mango Publishing. The guidebook describes the spectacular diving and snorkeling at 245 sites on the island and features an "indepth dive" into 47 of the island’s top sites using our unique 3D modeling technology. The guidebook includes: the Kittiwake, Babylon, Hepp’s Pipeline, Big Tunnels, Doc Poulson, Snapper Hole, Ironshore Gardens, The Maze and many more. Reef Smart is working on a second Cayman Islands guidebook focusing on Cayman Brac and Little Cayman and due for publication next year.

Option 1:
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Option 2:
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Option 3:
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Option 4:
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Just a general comment/opinion: To me, regardless of the picture, the overall cover design feels graphically “old/dated” - like I’m looking at 1970’s magazines or Nat Geo.

Also, since you are indicating the book is for scuba, snorkeling and surfing (surfing is even a common thing on GC???), why not try more of a montage or multi image approach representing those 3 activities? Just my 2 cents for what it’s worth...

 

[Darnold9999]

Not really keen on any of them. The silversides with a diver without camera would work. Having the camera, as others have said makes it artificial. Wrecks don’t really say GC to me and the last one is boring. If I had to pick one it would be silversides.

 

[WeRtheOcean]

Number three had such drama compared to the other choices. That's why I chose it.

 

[KathyV]

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question-just curious.
Cayman Island is well known for their stingrays (hence: Stingray City)... Would it be appropriate to add a stingray pic in one of the guidebook? Or is it already "over-used" in other Cayman advertisements?

David Doubilet's photos of Grand Cayman Stingrays for National Geographic are stunning but Stingray images have been used so often to advertise Cayman's attractions that I think they've been over-done.