If romance covers are meant to be fantasies, then V.I.M. OREDUX #7 is a fever dream inside a design software meltdown. This isn’t just a bad cover — it’s a celestial calamity, a digital tribute to abs, angel wings, and wildly misguided graphic design choices.
Let’s start with the star of the show: a shirtless man ripping open his button-down like he’s halfway to transforming into a motivational speaker. He’s lit with the intensity of a cologne ad, his expression set to “I just flexed through three dimensions.” But what really sets this cover apart is what’s behind him: a set of clip-art wings so cartoonish, they wouldn’t pass in a kindergarten play. The golden swoop hovering above the “O” in OREDUX is presumably a halo — or a stylized pretzel? Either way, it looks like it got lost on the way to a frozen yogurt logo.
The typography is a full-on crisis. “V.I.M. OREDUX #7” arrives in a shrieking font with inconsistent spacing, an awkward number tag, and capitalization that demands attention but offers no clarity. It’s unclear what any of it means — a military code? A vitamin supplement? A rebooted secret society? Honestly, it could be anything. Including a cover mistake that never got caught.
Then there’s the black box at the bottom right — a mysterious, jarring block of nothing. It cuts off part of the model’s jeans, interrupts the flow of the image, and serves no apparent purpose beyond screaming, “I forgot to crop this before publishing.”
The wings themselves? Floating. Misaligned. Pixelated. Their scale is off, the shading is absent, and they hover like graphic design afterthoughts. There is zero shadow interaction with the figure, which makes them feel like stickers slapped on in Microsoft Paint with trembling hands.
The overall composition is like three different covers fighting for dominance — romance cover torso worship, fantasy angel aesthetic, and failed dystopian title card. None of them win. The result is a disjointed, unintentionally hilarious visual experience that leaves the viewer with more questions than answers — starting with, “What is V.I.M., and how do I stop it?”
At the bottom, the author gets the “International Best Selling Author” banner, suggesting there was a marketing budget. Just not one that reached the design department.
If this is book seven, we can only assume there are six other design tragedies leading up to this moment, and now we’ve hit the holy glitch of the series. It’s not romance. It’s not fantasy. It’s V.I.M. OREDUX — and it’s descending from the heavens with pixelated wings and a broken layout.
Final judgment?
Design purgatory.
Wings of regret.
And a redemption arc that starts with deleting that golden swoosh.