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Moon Travel Guides was founded in 1973 with a mission to advocate for independent, active, and conscious travel. We started out with guides to Asia printed by founder Bill Dalton on a Xerox machine (yes, really)!

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Moscow and St. Petersburg (Moon Handbooks) Paperback – 7 May 2009

• Print length 372 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Avalon Travel Publishing
• Publication date 7 May 2009
• Dimensions 13.97 x 1.91 x 19.05 cm
• ISBN-10 1598801716
• ISBN-13 978-1598801712
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Avalon Travel Publishing; 1st edition (7 May 2009)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 372 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1598801716
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1598801712
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.97 x 1.91 x 19.05 cm

About the authors

Jennifer chater.

Australian author Jennifer Chater started out as a journalist at The Sydney Morning Herald in 1985. She visited the USSR in 1988 and was so captivated by Moscow and Leningrad that, upon returning to Sydney, she enrolled in the Russian department at the University of New South Wales. After graduating and making repeated trips to Russia, she moved to St. Petersburg in 1998. A year later she relocated to Moscow. Having worked for more than a decade as an editor at The Moscow Times and The Moscow News, she is now a freelance writer, editor and translator based in Moscow.

Nathan Toohey

Nathan Toohey first visited Russia in January '92 with a group of students from Sydney's University of New South Wales where he was studying Russian together with Moon Moscow & St. Petersburg co-author Jennifer Chater. Several visits later, in January '98 Nathan moved to Russia where he has lived ever since. He has travelled extensively around Russia, from Murmansk above the Arctic Circle to the Caucasus Mountains in the south and across to Lake Baikal in Siberia.

Besides authoring the travel guide book, he has edited several Moscow Times restaurant guide books, edited various other publications and written about all manner of Russia-related topics. He currently works as a freelance editor, translator and writer in Moscow.

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Birds of a Feather

For Travel Writers with an Independent Spirit

Travel Guide Cover Design Case Study: Moon Guides

Travel Guide Cover Design Case Study

This is a continuation of my article series where I review and assess the cover design elements used by the traditional and indie travel guide publishers. By reviewing how these publishing companies and indie authors combine images, fonts, color, and design elements into a cohesive design, you’ll get invaluable insight into the best approach for designing your travel guide cover.

The most important thing to remember is that your reader has specific expectations when it comes to buying a book within a niche, you only have to look at the primary book niches like romance, thriller, cozy mystery etc. to see how each niche has their own set of design styles that help to communicate the book’s content to their target audience, and travel guides are no different.

When you browse the Amazon bestsellers in your genre, you should notice patterns in color schemes, fonts, layouts, and images. You’ll want your cover to stand out by looking awesome, yet ensure it naturally fits into your genre. via Dave Chesson

Moon Travel Guide Covers

Moon follows the trend of having their image extend across the entire cover, with their Moon branding in the upper left or right, and the destination name contained in a sky blue box outlined in white. This moves around the cover based on its optimal positioning so as not to obscure key elements of the cover image.

Below the destination, Moon also includes the author’s name in white text overlaid on the cover image, and this is the only one of our examples where the author is highlighted on the front of the guide.

The older Moon covers use a destination image covering two-thirds of the cover, and the top third features the destination name in white text on a blue background. The old white logo on a black background was more distinctive, but this has been replaced with a less obtrusive logo similar to how Lonely Planet uses their logo.

Moon Travel Guide Road Trip Covers

As well as their standard destination travel guides, Moon publish a Road Trip series. They use their same Moon branding at the top of the book (but in this case it’s centered). The destination is contained within a art deco inspired content box, which includes the Road Trip text in yellow. The box and branding is positioned directly onto the background image, so in some cases the Road Trip text doesn’t stand out very well (as in the Pacific Coast Highway travel guide).

At the bottom of these Moon travel guides the authors names is contained within a yellow box with blue text, and additional details about the destination the guide covers, is contained within a blue box with white text. These really are readable unless you increase the size of cover image on your screen.

The colors (blue and yellow) are similar to the branded colors used in Rick Steves travel guide covers.

• Design Tip: Is there enough space on your cover to increase the size of your author name to make it more readable?
• Design Tip: If you’re including additional information on your cover to further define the scope of your destination, how readable should this text be?
• Design Tip: If you’re including a branded logo or series name (e.g. Road Trip) and using a consistent color across all of your covers, is it the optimal color for all backgrounds, or would it be best to vary the text color to make it stand out?

Travel Guide Cover Design Industry Comparisons

There are distinct niche norms for destination travel guides, although each traditional publisher has developed a branded look that readers can automatically identify with. Your role, as a cover designer, is to assess the industry norms, and create a cover that is representative of your content, your writing style, and the travel niche you want to feature in.

Click for more Travel Guide Cover Design Articles

Read more articles in my how to write a travel guide series.

I’m putting the finishing touches on my  How to Write and Self-Publish a Travel Guide Series , which details a step by step approach for writing and producing your own travel guide. It’s part of a four-part series aimed at helping travel bloggers achieve passive income based on their passions and existing content.

Each month I host a monthly free prize draw and give away a travel writing e-book to the lucky winner. Sign up to join my mailing list to participate.

Author: Jay Artale

2 thoughts on “ travel guide cover design case study: moon guides ”.

You’ve saved me a tonne of time in research with this article series. Thanks. Competitive research genie, you!

Glad to help Ali. I love sharing my research and if it saves you time, that all the better.

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I abandoned my corporate career to become a digital nomad and full-time writer, and now run Birds of a Feather Press to help other writers become authors. I also write about my travels on my personal blog Roving Jay: Nomadic Adventures in Wonderland – without the rose-tinted glasses

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Books in Order: Moon Handbooks by Tom Stienstra

Titles list.

Moon Northern California Camping

Whether you're camping among towering redwoods, along rugged coastline, or in the High Sierra, you'll always find your perfect campsite with Moon Northern California Camping.A Campsite for Everyone: Pick the right tent or RV site with options ranging from secluded… Read More

Moon Québec City

See the City with a local!Sacha Jackson lives and works in Québec. In this book, she shares what she loves about Québec City with you.NEIGHBORHOODSExperience the life of the city in the best neighborhoods—traverse historic Quartier du Petit Champlain and… Read More

Tom Stienstra

About the author.

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By the Author

Moon California Camping

by Tom Stienstra

52 Weekend Adventures in Northern California

Moon California Hiking

by Tom Stienstra , by Ann Marie Brown

Moon West Coast RV Camping

Moon Pacific Northwest Camping

Moon Oregon Camping

Moon California Fishing

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NASA Picks 3 Companies to Help Astronauts Drive Around the Moon

The agency’s future moon buggies will reach speeds of 9.3 miles per hour and will be capable of self-driving.

By Kenneth Chang

NASA will be renting some cool wheels to drive around the moon.

Space agency officials announced on Wednesday that they have hired three companies to come up with preliminary designs for vehicles to take NASA astronauts around the lunar south polar region in the coming years. After the astronauts return to Earth, these vehicles would be able to self-drive around as robotic explorers, similar to NASA’s rovers on Mars.

The self-driving capability would also allow the vehicle to meet the next astronaut mission at a different location.

“Where it will go, there are no roads,” Jacob Bleacher, the chief exploration scientist at NASA, said at a news conference on Wednesday. “Its mobility will fundamentally change our view of the moon.”

The companies are Intuitive Machines of Houston, which in February successfully landed a robotic spacecraft on the moon ; Lunar Outpost of Golden, Colo.; and Venturi Astrolab of Hawthorne, Calif. Only one of the three will actually build a vehicle for NASA and send it to the moon.

NASA had asked for proposals of what it called the lunar terrain vehicle, or L.T.V., that could drive at speeds up to 9.3 miles per hour, travel a dozen miles on a single charge and allow astronauts to drive around for eight hours.

The agency will work with the three companies for a year to further develop their designs. Then NASA will choose one of them for the demonstration phase.

The L.T.V. will not be ready in time for the astronauts of Artemis III, the first landing in NASA’s return-to-the-moon program , which is currently scheduled for 2026 .

The plan is for the L.T.V. to be on the lunar surface ahead of Artemis V, the third astronaut landing that is expected in 2030, said Lara Kearney, manager of the extravehicular activity and human surface mobility program at the NASA Johnson Space Center.

“If they can get there earlier, we’ll take it earlier,” Ms. Kearney said.

The L.T.V. contract will be worth up to $4.6 billion over the next 15 years — five years of development and then a decade of operations on the moon, most of it going to the winner of this competition. But Ms. Kearney said the contracts allow NASA to later finance the development of additional rovers, or allow other companies to compete in the future.

The contract follows NASA’s recent strategy of purchasing services rather than hardware.

In the past, NASA paid aerospace companies to build vehicles that it then owned and operated. That included the Saturn V rocket, the space shuttles and the lunar roving vehicles — popularly known as moon buggies — that astronauts drove on the moon during the last three Apollo missions in 1971 and 1972.

The new approach has proved successful and less expensive for the transportation of cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA now pays companies, notably Elon Musk’s SpaceX, fixed fees for those services, more akin to plane tickets or FedEx shipments.

For the company chosen to build the L.T.V., the vehicle will remain its property, and that company will be able to rent it to other customers when it is not needed by NASA.

“It’s commercially available for us as a commercial business to sell capacity on that rover,” said Steve Altemus, the chief executive of Intuitive Machines, “and do that for international partners and for other commercial companies and space agencies around the world.”

The competition created alliances between small startups and larger, more established aerospace companies, as well as car companies. The Intuitive Machines team includes Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Michelin, the tire maker. Lunar Outpost added to its team Lockheed Martin, Goodyear and General Motors, which had helped design the Apollo moon buggies.

Astrolab is working with Axiom Space of Houston, which has sent private astronauts to the space station and is building a commercial module to the International Space Station. Astrolab announced last year that it had signed an agreement to send one of its rovers to the moon on a SpaceX Starship rocket as early as 2026. That mission is independent of whether it is selected by NASA, a company spokesman said.

While Lunar Outpost is competing with Intuitive Machines on this contract, it plans to work with the company separately, sending smaller robotic rovers to the moon on the company’s lunar landers.

Kenneth Chang , a science reporter at The Times, covers NASA and the solar system, and research closer to Earth. More about Kenneth Chang

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Keep track of things going on in our solar system and all around the universe..

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other 2024 event  that’s out of this world with  our space and astronomy calendar .

Scientists may have discovered a major flaw in their understanding of dark energy, a mysterious cosmic force . That could be good news for the fate of the universe.

A new set of computer simulations, which take into account the effects of stars moving past our solar system, has effectively made it harder to predict Earth’s future and reconstruct its past.

Dante Lauretta, the planetary scientist who led the OSIRIS-REx mission to retrieve a handful of space dust , discusses his next final frontier.

A nova named T Coronae Borealis lit up the night about 80 years ago. Astronomers say it’s expected to put on another show  in the coming months.

Is Pluto a planet? And what is a planet, anyway? Test your knowledge here .

The total solar eclipse will emerge over the South Pacific Ocean before the shadow falls across North America, beginning in parts of Mexico. The path of totality , where onlookers can witness the moon fully blocking the sun (through eclipse viewing glasses for safety ), is expected to first make landfall near the city of Mazatlán around 9:51 a.m. MT. 

The total solar eclipse will cross over the U.S.-Mexico border into Texas, where it will emerge over Eagle Pass at 12:10 p.m. CT and then peak at about 1:27 p.m. CT.

In Dallas, NASA data shows the partial eclipse will first become visible at 12:23 p.m. CT and peak at 1:40 p.m. CT. The next states in the path of totality are Oklahoma and Arkansas, where the eclipse begins in Little Rock at 12:33 p.m. CT. 

Cleveland will see the beginning of the eclipse at 1:59 p.m. ET. Darkness will start spreading over the sky in Buffalo, New York, at 2:04 p.m. ET. Then, the eclipse will reach northwestern Vermont, including Burlington, at 2:14 p.m. ET. Parts of New Hampshire and Maine will also follow in the path of totality before the eclipse first reaches the Canadian mainland  at 3:13 p.m. ET.

Although the experience won't be exactly the same, viewers in all the contiguous U.S. states outside the path of totality will still be able to see a partial eclipse. Some places will see most of the sun blocked by the moon, including Washington, D.C., where the partial eclipse will start at 2:04 p.m. ET and peak at about 3:20 p.m. ET.

In Chicago, viewers can start viewing the partial eclipse at 12:51 p.m. CT, with the peak arriving at 2:07 p.m. CT.  In Detroit, viewers will be able to enjoy a near-total eclipse beginning at 1:58 p.m. ET and peaking at 3:14 p.m. ET.

New York City will also see a substantial partial eclipse, beginning at 2:10 p.m. ET and peaking around 3:25 p.m. ET.

In Boston it will begin at 2:16 p.m. ET and peak at about 3:29 p.m. ET.

The below table by NASA shows when the eclipse will start, peak and end in 13 cities along the eclipse's path.

What time will the solar eclipse reach peak totality?

Millions more people will have the chance to witness the total solar eclipse this year than during the last total solar eclipse , which was visible from the U.S. in 2017. 

The eclipse's peak will mean something different for cities within the path of totality and for those outside. Within the path of totality, darkness will fall for a few minutes. The longest will last more than 4 minutes, but most places will see between 3.5 and 4 minutes of totality. In cities experiencing a partial eclipse, a percentage of the sun will be obscured for more than two hours.

Mazatlán is set to experience totality at 11:07 am PT. Dallas will be able to see the moon fully cover the sun at 1:40 p.m. CT. Little Rock will start to see the full eclipse at 1:51 p.m. CT, Cleveland at 3:13 p.m. ET and Buffalo at 3:18 p.m. ET. Totality will reach Burlington at 3:26 p.m. ET before moving into the remaining states and reaching Canada around 4:25 p.m.

Outside the path of totality, 87.4% of the sun will be eclipsed in Washington, D.C. at 3:20 p.m. ET, and Chicago will have maximum coverage of 93.9% at 2:07 p.m. CT. New York City is much closer to the path of totality this year than it was in 2017; it will see 89.6% coverage at 3:25 p.m. EDT. 

Detroit is another city that will encounter a near-total eclipse, with 99.2% maximum coverage at 3:14 p.m. ET. Boston will see 92.4% coverage at 3:29 p.m. ET.

What time will the solar eclipse end?

The eclipse will leave continental North America from Newfoundland, Canada, at 5:16 p.m. NT, according to NASA.

At the beginning of the path of totality in Mazatlán, the eclipse will be over by 12:32 p.m. PT, and it will leave Dallas at 3:02 p.m. CT. The eclipse will end in Little Rock at 3:11 p.m. CT, Cleveland at 4:29 p.m. CDT and Buffalo at 4:32 p.m. ET. Burlington won't be far behind, with the eclipse concluding at 4:37 p.m. ET.

Meanwhile, the viewing will end in Chicago at 3:21 p.m. CT, Washington, D.C. at 4:32 p.m. ET, and New York City at 4:36 p.m. ET. 

In Detroit, the partial eclipse will disappear at 4:27 p.m. ET, and in Boston, it will be over at 4:39 p.m. ET.

How long will the eclipse last in total?

The total solar eclipse will begin in Mexico at 11:07 a.m. PT and leave continental North America at 5:16 p.m. NT. From the time the partial eclipse first appears on Earth to its final glimpses before disappearing thousands of miles away, the celestial show will dazzle viewers for about 5 hours, according to timeanddate.com . 

The length of the total solar eclipse at points along the path depends on the viewing location. The longest will be 4 minutes and 28 seconds, northwest of Torreón, Mexico. Near the center of the path, totality takes place for the longest periods of time, according to NASA.

Spectators will observe totality for much longer today than during the 2017 eclipse , when the longest stretch of totality was 2 minutes and 32 seconds.

The moon's shadow seen on Earth today, called the umbra, travels at more than 1,500 miles per hour, according to NASA. It would move even more quickly if the Earth rotated in the opposite direction.

What is the longest a solar eclipse has ever lasted?

The longest known totality was 7 minutes and 28 seconds in 743 B.C. However, NASA says this record will be broken in 2186 with a 7 minute, 29 second total solar eclipse. The next total solar eclipse visible from parts of the U.S. won't happen until Aug. 23, 2044.

Sarah Maddox has been with CBS News since 2019. She works as an associate producer for CBS News Live.

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