Behind the cover of Standout Designs for the Web

The cover artwork for Standout Designs for the Web has a story stretching back to 2010, inspired by pulp detective magazines, a woman in a red dress, and a continuing detective story.

Someone asked me the other day about the cover artwork for Standout Designs for the Web. Given how infrequently I publish books, I suppose the story behind it has got a bit lost. So here’s how the artwork came about.

I was a fan of hardboiled detective fiction even before I wrote the original version of Hardboiled Web Design. So when I designed the cover for that book, I thought of pulp detective fiction and magazines like Crack Detective, Hollywood Detective, and New Detective Magazine.

On magazine covers like these, there’s usually a hardboiled hero, a villain of some description, and, famously, a woman in a red dress who’s often—but not always—in some form of mortal danger. I can’t imagine this damsel-in-distress narrative plays well today.

In 2010, when I asked Kevin Cornell to illustrate the cover of Hardboiled Web Design, I changed the narrative and had my woman in a red dress pointing her gun at the as-yet-unnamed detective.

I loved Kevin’s illustrations, but for the Fifth Anniversary Edition of Hardboiled Web Design, I needed a new cover. So I hired a young illustrator named Natalie Smith and conceived the idea of a continuing detective story, with each new book revealing another scene. Natalie started by making a set of pencil sketches.

And then painted them in her own distinctive style. The first was for the cover of Hardboiled Web Design Fifth Anniversary Edition. Then came Art Direction for the Web.

Even back then, I thought I might write books more regularly. But as Sue has threatened to hunt down and kill anyone who asks me to write books, the next one took a little longer to appear than I imagined.

When it came to designing a cover for Standout Designs for the Web, I wanted to continue the detective story. I also wanted something a little more, err, punchy, inspired by the bold colours on these Disney DuckTales comic covers.

And especially the style of the Batman: The Animated Series.

So I reworked the artwork to punch up the colours and adjusted the composition to better fit the book cover’s proportions.

I don’t know how many people notice the continuing story in these covers, and I don’t really mind if they don’t.

I often tell designers to put something of themselves into their work, and this detective story has a little bit of me in it.

Standout Designs for the Web

Pre-orders for Standout Designs for the Web open on 12 November 2026, and it will be delivered on 20 November. Everyone who pre-orders will also receive the Hardboiled Client Interview Guide for free—a practical companion to help designers ask better questions and discover what makes a company distinctive.

The DRM-free EPUB and PDF editions cost £14.99.