When any person shops for a book, the first thing that person sees is of course, the book covers. Ironic as it may be, they are literally judging the books by their covers. Given this, it is important that the design of a book cover will be perfect, especially in attracting the readers right from the get-go as they also have a plethora of books they will encounter. So, what does it take to design that perfect book cover?
STEP 1: Plan the Design
Before designing a book cover, it is critical that proper planning be done. This could be initiated by finding inspirations for the book cover as based on what the author wants, the concept of the book, the genre of the book, etc. Pinterest is a great site to look for ideas. There, you can search for concepts, save the images in a board, and compare them so you can see what stands out to you in relation to the design you are aiming for. If possible, a bookstore could also be visited to explore about existing book designs.
Subsequently, when considering the genre of the book for whose cover you are designing, you should be aware of the norms of book covers of that genre. For example, images of flowers often portray romance, blood often exhibit romance, puzzles often exhibit mysteries. Nonetheless, this does not mean that you will merely follow such norms. You should also be able to peak the interest of the readers by providing something intriguing in the book cover.
It is also important that you are aware of where the book will be sold, whether it will be sold physically, as an eBook, or both so you can decide on the fitting dimensions for the design. The format that the book will be in is really valuable because what you can accentuate in a physical book may not be the same for an eBook.
After that, you should choose the software that you will use in designing the book cover. Some great tools you can use for free are:
With templates and elements almost entirely free, Canva has a lot of available options for designing book covers easily. Just be careful to not utilize the available templates as is or you would end up producing designs that are common.
Specifically created for the creation of books, this tool is an ease to use in designing book covers. They even cater for authors who are interested in self-publishing.
A lot similar to Canva, Visme also has an array of template and element options you can readily use in designing book covers, although the options are less than that of Canva.
STEP 2: Design the Cover
Once you are able to plan for the design of the book cover, you are ready to take on the designing process itself. First and foremost, it is important to remember that you should create more than one design for a book cover. This permits you to look at various designs and see what works and what doesn’t. Having an array of designs available also allows the author or the publication company, whoever makes the decision, to have various options they can choose from.
When you design, it also helps that you have a structure of your layout. For this structure, you should consider your design direction, whether you will go for using illustrations, stock images, or even original artworks or photography. Whatever direction you will opt for, just make sure that it will truly captivate the readers and that it is also not confusing. Do not put things on the book cover that is no way related to the contents of the book.
Further, the book cover design should readily present the purpose of the book, what is it about, for whom it is intended, what its genre is, etc. This leads to the book immediately reaching the right audience. The reality with any book is that that a book will just not cater to everyone. Some will like a book and some will hate it, what matters is that it reaches those that it is meant for and that will only be a possibility if the book cover is done right.
Additionally, it matters a lot that the typography and the color palette of the book cover are taken into account. For the typography, the texts on the book cover need to have variety. You could not merely slap the title, the subtitle, the name of the author, the review, etc. on the design and have them all in the same font type and size. Know what needs to be higlighted and how to highlight them. Also be mindful of the font types and sizes that work together and which of them are fitting for the book. You cannot put gore-looking fonts in a romance work when it does not generally make sense. The same idea goes for the color palette of the book. Train your creative eye to know what colors work together and are appropriate for the genre of the book. Black will of course not be the best color for children’s book, unless the book is unconventional and necessitates black.
STEP 3: Test the Design
Once the design process is finished, feedbacks should be sought. You can begin the feedback process with yourself, then present the design to the author and/or publication company, and then also ask for opinions from outsiders. With these outsiders though, it does not mean that you will just publicly post your designs. It simply means that you should ask a few people outside of the deciding circle, especially those you can trust. To publicly present your design may be harmful to your work because aside from the possibility that your work can be copied without your permission, the opinions of too many people on it may confuse you as a designer.
You can ask the chosen few viewers of the design various questions about the design such as, “What in the book cover immediately caught your attention?”, “If you would change something about the book cover, what would it be?”, “What is your first impression on the book cover?”, etc. Take note of all these feedbacks and incorporate them as you deem necessary. It is important that you do not get overwhelmed with the feedbacks and just take what is actually valuable among them or you might overthink the book cover design, leading to you losing the creative control.
The Conclusion
It is without doubt, that no matter the book, its genre, its author, and so on, the book cover is highly valuable. Thus, it should truly be perfect. Nonetheless, some may contend that the task, attaining the perfect book cover, is impossible. After all, is there really such thing as “perfect” in this world? However, the perfect we are talking about in this sense does not mean that the design is without any fault whatsoever. It just means that it is perfect because the book cover makes certain that the book will truly reach its main goal — to be read. With all this, a subtantial responsibility lies on you as a designer to be mindful of every step you take and of every decision you make. Only then will you be able to actually design the perfect book cover.