Most people do judge the book by its cover, which makes the cover a crucial part for book designers. Whether you are a book writer, or helping someone else, learning how to design a book cover can be quite challenging. The cover design presentation should entice anyone to read more of the book aside from the short synopsis at the back of the book.
Knowing how crucial it is, here are five tips for designing your ideal book cover.
1. Find Motivation
Before starting anything else, you need to find for yourself a motivation for your cover design. You can start by checking out other book covers and get some ideas of how they did it. There’s a lot of information you can gather just by scanning through them.
Then, you can go back to your book cover idea and determine a few things yourself.
- Primary Genre. Determine what genre the book is all about. You should know this already if you’re the author. Otherwise, ask the author or read the content yourself.
- Tone of the Book. The theme would be the tone of the book, and it refers to how the book will be presented.
- Main Plot. While the cover is not intended to tell the whole plot of the story, it should give a good idea to the reader what is in the book.
2. Focus on Typographic Hierarchy
The foremost aspect you need to consider is the text that you’ll include in your book cover. Most, if not all, books only include the title and name of the author. You can put more if you want, like a catchphrase or subtitle or series number.
The main focus on your cover will be your title. Focus on your title more than any other text on your cover. You can make your checklist to determine if your writing is ideal.
- Font Style. Make it readable and in line with the theme of your book.
- Font Size. Your title should be the emphasis, so it should have the biggest font size. Contrast and match the other texts with the title properly.
- Alignment. Be consistent with your texts and create a presentable pattern. Please don’t make it abstract for some people.
- Color. If you decide to put a mixture of colors on your cover, especially with images, make sure that it fits well. It shouldn’t be too bright or too dim.
3. Consider Images
Visual hierarchy is another type of hierarchy that focuses more on visual emphasis and images. Consider adding images to your book cover or arranging your texts to form an image visually.
Using a minimalistic approach is a great help to keep things in order and not too messy. Don’t put too many images in your book cover. Please keep it simple, concise, and stylish.
4. Try Out a Software
Make use of the help that software applications can offer to you. You don’t have to start through a sketch and test out different designs that work for you.
There are various available online applications that you can use to try out your cover designs. You can print them as drafts and see for yourself how it looks. Through these applications, you can easily make adjustments and produce multiple copies for your friends to judge.
Don’t be afraid and have other people check it out. Different eyes see different messages in one picture.
5. Review More Than Once
Don’t get excited just yet when you’ve finished your cover design. Review everything and make sure that everything is in order.
Individually, check out the essential things in your cover design.
- Legality. No copyrights should be violated.
- Compatibility. Ensure that your file type is compatible with printing, and the printer can print your design without any errors.
- Visibility. Review your colors again so that they have perfect contrast with each other.
- Overall Quality. Look at the design as a whole and make comments for yourself. You can even ask a professional designer for comments.
The Bottom Line
Designing a book cover will surely take time and needs a lot of patience to perfect it. Some people have the talent to come up with great ideas right away, but some do not. While it’s wrong to judge a book by its cover, make it striking and exciting for everyone.
Let the cover speak for itself.