Sometimes a cover sets out to be deep and symbolic, but instead lands squarely in the uncanny valley of Photoshop. Written Off is one of those covers. It clearly wants to say something about fractured identity, brokenness, and the process of piecing a life back together—but visually, it just looks like someone attacked a stock photo with the crop tool and gave up halfway through.
Let’s start with the face. Or rather, faces. Or rather, the jigsaw puzzle of grayscale scraps taped over a model’s expression like a scrapbook made during a nervous breakdown. Instead of evoking mystery or poignancy, it reads as Photoshop 101: Collage Assignment. The different tones and paper “textures” don’t blend—they fight each other. It’s less “layered human experience” and more “I lost a bet with Adobe.”
Then there’s the typography. The word Written is scrawled in teal cursive, desperately trying to be modern and artsy, while Off sits in bold pink, like it belongs on a Hallmark Channel poster. The fonts don’t harmonize; they’re just awkwardly dating each other for lack of better options. Above it all, the series tagline—The Approved in Christ Series—sits in a bland, brochure-ready font that screams “retreat weekend handout” instead of “novel.”
And the background? Blank white. A bold minimalist choice, sure, but here it just makes the whole collage look like it’s floating in PowerPoint limbo. White space can be elegant, but only when the central art earns the spotlight. In this case, the central art is begging to be sent back for revisions.
The result is a cover that feels less like a polished book and more like a therapy worksheet for graphic designers. The symbolism is there, but buried under clumsy cuts, mismatched tones, and fonts that look like they’ve never spoken to each other.
Written Off wanted to be poignant, but it ended up looking like a church bulletin had a nervous breakdown in Photoshop.