Prompt
A single white koi circling inside a deep indigo roundel, flat mineral color on textured paper. 2026 trade-cover trend: oversized structural typography, high-contrast palette, strong readability at thumbnail size. All cover text must be English only. Book cover with title "The Koi Circle" and author name "Mara Ellison" rendered on the cover.. Workflow direction: Create the finished flat front-cover artwork itself, not a photograph or mockup of a physical book. The rectangular front cover must fill the entire output canvas edge to edge, viewed perfectly straight-on with the camera perpendicular to the artwork. Build one compelling genre-appropriate key image on a single strong subject in a single scene — never a collage of competing motifs. Follow the 2026 trade-cover direction: oversized structural title typography treated as part of the artwork and placed where the chosen style directs — top, side, vertical, or integrated into the artwork, not always a top banner; a high-contrast palette; an author name placed deliberately and secondary to the title; short correctly rendered title text in the requested language enclosed in quotation marks; and a silhouette that stays readable at 100-pixel thumbnail size in a two-second scroll, all with trim-safe breathing room.
Style-specific direction:
Style: art-house minimalist editorial book cover blending Japanese wabi-sabi restraint with Swiss-grid graphic precision; a flat poster-like symbolic design rather than a scene illustration.
Subject: preserve the requested concept, reduced to one strong graphic motif — concentric ripples, an ensō brush circle, contour lines, a single botanical or celestial form — rendered with clean geometric precision.
Composition: portrait front-cover layout with asymmetric balance; the motif anchors the grid while typography lives beside or through it as a compositional element, never a centered top banner.
Lighting or Color: flat even illumination; a minimal palette of deep indigo, white, and charcoal with one restrained accent, on a textured washi-like paper grain.
Typography: render the exact quoted title once as confident display lettering placed vertically or asymmetrically and the exact quoted author once in small quiet type; keep both crisp and correctly spelled.
Output format: flat front-cover artwork only, filling the canvas edge to edge and viewed perfectly straight-on; no physical book object, photographic scene, spine, pages, back cover, perspective, mockup, badge, logo, watermark, or duplicated text.. Avoid: physical book, 3D book, book mockup, product mockup, spine, pages, page edges, back cover, perspective view, angled cover, tabletop, pedestal, hands holding a book, room scene, drop shadow around the cover, misspelled title, crowded typography, weak focal point, busy collage of competing motifs, washed-out low contrast, text too close to edges, unrelated imagery, garbled author name, misspelled or duplicated title, misspelled author, photographic scene, centered top-banner typography, cluttered composition, gradient mush, mockup, spine, watermark
