Welcome to the inspirational train wreck that is Hardwired to Rise, a book cover that asks: “What if a PowerPoint slide from 2007 had a spiritual awakening and decided it was a brand?”
At first glance, you’re smacked in the face by a neon-saturated, over-sharpened mess that looks like it was made during a high-stakes Canva tutorial by someone under hypnosis—which, in this case, may not be a coincidence. Because yes, this book is authored by Amy Koford, also known as The Happy Hypnotist—which sounds like either a children’s magician or someone trying to sell you herbal supplements in a Facebook Live video.
Let’s begin with the typography:
“HARDWIRED TO RISE” arrives in all caps, as if it’s physically yelling its own title for attention. The gradient blue and metallic beveling make it look like it was peeled straight off the packaging of a discontinued energy drink. The kerning is tight enough to strangle optimism, and the drop shadow? It’s not so much subtle depth as it is graphic fog. You could lose a motivational speaker in there.
Then there’s the motivational tagline:
“Live Fearlessly, Prosperously & Optimally!”—which honestly feels like it was assembled by a buzzword bingo generator. It’s got the kind of vague intensity you’d expect from an airport self-help kiosk. And for some reason, it’s in toxic highlighter green—a color so unnatural it looks like it was banned in three countries for causing digital nausea.
Now onto the background—if you can call it that. It’s either a tree or an explosion of celery, depending on how much coffee you’ve had. There’s a solar flare coming from the upper corner, or possibly just a really aggressive lens flare, desperately trying to distract us from the fact that the visual elements have no thematic connection whatsoever. Are we in nature? Heaven? A clipart jungle? The ambiguity is only matched by the chaos.
But the real pièce de résistance is the branding.
“Amy Koford – The Happy Hypnotist.”
The words Happy Hypnotist are locked in bold white caps with a cartoonish smiley-face arrow that loops like a bad logo for a chain of discount dentists. And it’s positioned so oddly it looks like it’s trying to hypnotize the typeface itself into doing better work.
And just in case you weren’t yet convinced that this was a marketing fever dream: behold the “International Best Seller” sticker! A digital gold seal slapped on top of the chaos like a bumper sticker on a burning car. There’s no source, no context, just bold confidence that someone, somewhere bought this book, and that’s all that matters.
Let’s be clear: this cover isn’t “Hardwired to Rise.”
It’s hardwired to crash.
It’s hardwired to overwhelm.
It’s hardwired to look like a Times New Roman intervention staged by a motivational Instagram reel.
In the end, Hardwired to Rise is what happens when your Canva template has a midlife crisis and tries to go to Burning Man for self-actualization. And while the book may be about escaping digital noise, the cover is the graphic equivalent of twenty browser tabs screaming affirmations at once.
Dizzying, disjointed, and deeply committed to its aesthetic confusion, this cover didn’t just miss the mark—it missed the genre, the tone, and possibly the entire color wheel.
Namaste, I guess.