Book Cover Design: The Creative Process

[Guest post by Solaire]

Where is the starting point for your cover design? And how do you get the final result to look like the picture in your head?

While I am no expert in any way when it comes to designing book covers, I can take you through my personal designing process and try to give you a few tips on the way.

So, the cover for my sister’s upcoming first novel, which will be published through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing this May, was my very first cover design. And this is the path that I followed in order to create it:

-        Reading the book (of course)   
-        Brainstorming ideas to come up with a concept 

-          Doing research

-          Drawing a rough sketch

-          Scanning and editing the cover on the computer

 

1) The Concept

After you have read the book and gotten an idea of what it is about – and ideally taken a few notes about characters or settings –, it is time to do some brainstorming. Who or what do you want to feature on the cover? It can be something abstract, so the focus will be on the title. You could choose for the main character to be front and center or, especially when it comes to fantasy or science-fiction, feature an artwork that shows a glimpse of the world you created. If you're into photography, you might even put one of your works on the cover. The possibilities are more or less endless, the difficult task is to find out what's best for your specific book.

2) Doing Research

After – or, even better, during – the initial brainstorming phase, I learned a lot from the research I did online. In one video by Random House that I found quite helpful, a few of their designers talked about the process of cover design and also show which stages a few of them went through before publication. Some of my personal favourites are the designs for Ben Marcus’s books created by Peter Mendelsund. He is also the designer who, in my view, gave quite an important tip when he said that a character should never be shown in full on a book’s cover or jacket, in order to leave some room for the readers’ imagination.

3) Sketching

Before even starting up my graphic program, I use a good old pen and some paper and get sketching. The more ideas you have and bring to paper, the better, because during this stage, you should always check back with the author and get his or her feedback. For me, this came naturally, since my sister was the author and was also present when we discussed possible ideas.
This initial sketch can be quite abstract, as illustrated in the picture below, the important part is that you get it on paper and that you yourself have a clear picture of what you doodled there in your head.

First 'idea' draft.

For “Celtic Forest”, I actually didn’t have to do much sketching, because one picture had come into my mind sometime after reading the final draft of the manuscript, and both of my sisters (one the author of the book and the other fellow beta reader, marketing executive etc.) immediately liked it, so we decided to go to the next stage.

4) Editing

Most people will probably use a design program like Adobe Photoshop for this part, but I chose Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7, since I was already familiar with it.

For me, the decision to colour the picture on the computer was mostly based on the thought that this way, I could easily make changes to it if necessary. And also because my skills with watercolours are rather limited…

"Celestia" - tracing the outlines with black pen.

Black outline of the 'forest'.

So, at this stage, the process will be quite different, depending on your cover design. In my case, I went from one ‘layer’ of the picture to the next. At first, I started colouring the trees and simply trying out a few of the graphic program’s functions. From there, I went on to colouring the leaves, the forest ground, the snow etc. 

Colouring of the tree trunks.

The figure that I chose to be in the center of the picture was drawn separately and was the last layer that I inserted when the background was finished. Some of you might notice that, even though I mentioned Mendelsund’s tip before, about avoiding to show characters in full on a cover, I still decided to incorporate Celestia, one of the story’s main characters, in my design. However, I tried to avoid showing her face, plus I think that, since it is not a photo but a drawing, there is still lots of room for imagination.

5) The Finishing Touches

The very last thing left to do after I had finished the cover was to add the text. I left that task to one of my sisters, since she is more skilled when it comes to fonts.
Usually, the text on the cover comprises of at least the book title and the author’s name, as well as the name of the publishing house, if you’re not planning on self-publishing your work – and voilà! Your book is ready to be published – as long as you’ve finished everything else…
As for the final result of my cover designing process, it will probably be revealed some time in May, shortly before the actual release of "The Farnir Chronicles - Part 1: Celtic Forest".

As a final note, to see how fun this process of designing a book cover can be, I recommend you watch designer Chip Kidd’s TED talk from March 2012: “Designing a book is no laughing matter. OK, it is”.

And lastly, here are some of my favourite book covers, many of which convinced me to have a look at the books’ blurbs in the first place:

"Cress" by Marissa Meyer

"Saphirblau"  by Kerstin Gier

"Seide und Schwert" by Kai Meyer

"Zeitenzauber" by Eva Völler

"The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern

"These Broken Stars" by Amie Kaufman

Book Cover Design: 4 Corner Stones for Positioning with Book Covers

Your book cover is the first impression you make on a potential reader. One cover, one chance. 

Book covers are an essential marketing tool which should position your book in your reader's mind at a single glance. We can also usually tell which genre a book belongs to simply by its cover. Seems like a tall order for a single image design?

Maybe, but that also means that if you get it right you can set your book apart.

Here are four corner stones you should keep in mind when starting out on your cover design:

     1. Let potential readers know that they are purchasing quality literary content

A sleezy or poorly designed cover will hardly inspire confidence in a reader that the content is any more professional.

     2. Design with your reader in mind

Your design has to appeal to your segment of readers and not only to you. Look at how covers in your chosen genre are normally designed and try to replicate the basic concept. By replicate I mean for example looking at the general balance of headline font size in comparison with the rest of the text you wish to see on your cover. Other elements you should study are the image choice - does it hint at the story unfolding in the page? -, imagery type and the position of the author name. To make your life even easier concentrate on the bestselling titles within your target genre. 

     3. Stand out among other covers in your target market segment while not completely departing from the general genre look and feel

While you might have success by absolutely departing from the general genre look and feel in your design, there are smaller tweaks you can add to give your design a unique touch.

Here are several ideas on how you can make your book stand out:

1. Add a catchy line from your blurb on your cover. Two lines at most.

2. Add a compelling endorsement. The shorter and snappier, the better.

3. Add a circle badge which emphasises a unique selling point (USP), like:

    - a book comparison reference; e.g.:"For Twillight Lovers"

    - a reference to a bonus inside; e.g.: "Sneak Peek of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons"

    - a bestseller stamp (once you landed on a bestseller list)

4. Make your cover design interactive

Why not give your readers the opportunity to choose the final cover design. Narrow your creative choices down to three versions you like, introduce them on one of your channels (e.g.: blog, facebook, twitter...) and give people the option to vote on their favourite. You can even offer a free give away in return for submitting a vote. This also has the additional benefit of actively reaching out to your reader base before you actually launch. 

Bonus Tip for eBook Covers: Keep your ebook thumbnail images clean

If your eBook thumbnail is too busy it will be drowned out in the search as potential readers browse categories. In an online search, setting readers are most attracted by colours, a clean structure and clear font which translates well into the tiny space of a thumbnail. Too much text will make the small thumbnails too busy and keep your book cover from popping on the page.          

For further tips, here are a few great websites and articles that will help you figure out which cover direction will best fit your book positioning and how you can get to a great cover design:

How To Create a Great Book Cover by Scott Berkun

A behind the scenes look on the cover creation process

The Book Cover Archive and Goodreads

Great websites to get inspired by current bestselling covers in different genres

Book Cover Design by The Creative Penn

A blog post with recommended cover designers

5 Steps for Designing an Ebook Cover by Matthew Weber

Good tips on what to focus on for ebook covers in particular