Y Dafydd Iwan Cynnar

Inside the image.

A square photographic cover shows a seated man outdoors, framed from about the waist upwards, with one bent knee rising into the lower-right foreground. He fills most of the image and sits slightly left of centre. His body angles towards the viewer's right, while his face turns and looks off to the viewer's left. He has dark, wavy hair and a serious, thoughtful expression. He wears a deep blue jacket over a muted mauve knitted top and a dark high-neck layer. One hand rests on the raised knee; a ring is visible on a finger.

The portrait is set against a soft-focus garden or park. Leafy trees fill the background, with dark branches and foliage at the left and right, and paler sky showing through near the top. A strip of green lawn and scattered brown leaves appears along the bottom. The shallow focus keeps the man sharp against the blurred trees. Cool blue and green tones dominate, offset by the warmer mauve of his top and the subdued autumnal ground. The daylight is soft and even, with gentle shadows beneath his hair and around his clothing. There is no visible border.

Large white uppercase lettering reading “DAFYDD IWAN” stretches across the lower-middle of the image, overlaying his torso and extending across much of the cover. Directly below it, a smaller bold white line reads “Y CANEUON CYNNAR”. At the bottom left, over the darker ground, pale lettering reads “39 CÂN AR CD DDWBL”. The typography is clean and sans serif, with the main name in thin, widely spaced capitals and the subtitle in heavier capitals. The image is photographic, with slight softness in the background and no evident graphic ornament beyond the overlaid text.