“I was like a kid in a candy shop with
so many great covers to choose from!”

I confess I’ve exaggerated a bit. Let’s call it “editorial license.” Back in early 2010, I published a book called “Aikido Pioneers — Prewar Era.” It’s a collection of 20 interviews with many of the closest students of Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba from the 1920s and 30s. This work was based on scores of interviews I conducted from 1973 through about 2005. It was a long, arduous task, but I think the result is an essential source book on aikido history.

I had written and published some earlier works on aikido from the pre-Photoshop age, but I never could get the printed covers to come out the way I wanted. Not wishing to repeat this experience with “Pioneers,”, I decided to try something radical to get a good cover design.

Here is a quote from an old blog that describes the process I used to get the final cover.

About two months ago, we put out a call to the aikido community for interested designers to submit sample designs for the cover. To our great surprise, we had over 20 submissions, many of them fully worthy of being selected as the final cover. We would like to express our appreciation for the outstanding efforts of the many participants by showing you some samples of their submissions. Take a look at the great material we had to work with…

The winning cover which you see at the top of this blog was designed by the talented João Tinoco from Portugal. I was blown away when I saw what he put together and very proud to have his design grace the cover of my book. Grab the PDF file below to get an idea of how the book turned out!

Right click here to download the sample
PDF file of “Aikido Pioneers – Prewar Era”!