• A really great way to start out in design
• Finding cover designs or designers you admire may help you see what works technically
• Helps nail down a style you like
• In turn, can help you find your cover design style

• Look at covers in your genre!
• Whenever I design a cover, I take a scroll through Goodreads to pick up some inspiration in designs I personally love
• I also love walking around my bookstore and taking a look at physical copies
• Find a cover design you like, and point out the specific reasons you like it

• Off-white colour from A List of Cages and Holding Up The Universe
• Silhouette from Painless and previous cover design of I’m Disappointed
• Speech bubble from Simon VS the Homo Sapiens Agenda and Say What You Will
• Marker texture from A List of Cages

• Coming up with concept art is a super important part of designing a successful book cover. 
• Acts as the skeleton of your book cover
• Your book cover’s roadmap
• Saves time/effort
• Similar to an outline for a novel. 
• Can be a very quick sketch, or full fledged design
• I like keeping my concept art quick, but if this is your first cover, making a more detailed mockup can help. 

• Sketch out book cover ideas once you get them/take notes of concepts you’d like to explore
• If you can’t come up with concepts, take a look at your inspiration folder and pull concepts/ideas from covers you love
• This does not mean copying another book cover (this is notttt a good idea!). BUT, pulling inspiration from elements you like on a cover can be helpful in generating your own concepts
• You don’t have to come up with concept art (sometimes winging it works!) but I do recommend jotting notes down, and drawing out loose sketches when applicable!
• Keep a list of ideas for book covers as you accumulate them (almost like a little vault of concepts lol) and reference them in the future!
• Take a look at as many book covers as you can and make a list of elements you like and don’t like
• This is one of the easiest ways to accumulate ideas/concepts!

• There are 7 elements of design: line, shape, texture, form, space, value, and colour. 
• These sometimes vary depending on where you look, but this is what I was taught, so I’m going to be working off that!

• I’m going to go through them really quickly via an assignment I did for my comm tech class
• Keep in mind this assignment is 2 years old and is only meant to give you an idea of what these elements are 

• Line is probably the most important element of design as every piece of art starts with one. 
• There are various types of lines. You can have curved lines, straight lines, vertical lines, horizontal lines and so on.

• You can have more mathematical, geometric shapes, or more abstract, free form shapes. 

• Texture is the feel of a particular surface. 
• Texture in my opinion is one of the most important elements when it comes to graphic design, especially book covers. 
• My favourite thing to see in book covers is texture, whether that be paper textures like construction paper, crumpled paper, wallpaper, lace, wall textures, paint textures, or marker textures
• Texture adds depth to designs, and if there’s any element of design you focus on in this post, I’d highly recommend it be this one. 
• (i’m biased but still)

• Form is almost like shape, except instead of flat objects, we’re dealing with 3-dimensional objects. 
• I don’t often use it in my covers since I like drawings and flat shapes in my designs, but if you want to include objects on your cover, or any sort of 3D shape, this would be form. 

• The distance around an object, to put it simply
• Space in covers can help emphasize what’s important, and what is less important, or can draw attention to a particular piece of your design. 

• In Twilight, the black space helps emphasize the main image, the hands holding the apple. 
• This also occurs in the Red Queen book covers. The empty space around the crown draws attention immediately to the focal point
• You can also lack space. In The Duff, the girl’s face is the only thing you can see on the cover. 

• Is determined by how much light or dark is incorporated into design. 

• A great example of value in book covers is on Alexandra Bracken’s Passenger. As you can see, the green at the top fades down in a gradient as more white is added to the centre. 

• Light reflecting off objects
• Can make certain elements of your design stand out

• Adds layers of depth to your work
• Thus can take your cover-making skills to another level
• Can help in producing ideas

• In my opinion, can make or break a design
• Can mean clutter of things, OR too much or too little space between elements
• Title placement  
• Composition is sometimes subjective from design to design

• Pay close attention to detail and spacing
• Look out for natural shapes in your design you can fit elements into
• Watch the linked video from Mango Street (one of my favourite photography channels) on composition
• While photography and design are two different things, the tips in this video can also be applied to various ideas in design such as headroom and leading lines

• doesn’t effectively use space
• no headroom for text
• text is covering 200 element (looks very clunky)
• text is cut off
• No focal point
• Can’t read the title

• Textual elements are better spread out
• Title is now focal point
• Slightly imbalanced
• 200 element is distracting 

• Addition of stick figures balances out cover  
• Text follows natural shape of photograph
• Removed 200 element makes cover look less clunky

• Half the title is on a dark background
• Lacks readability
• Last name is cut off by window
• Uninteresting composition (everything is on one line)
• No movement

• Title placement is better
• Better readability
• ‘A novel’ fits under windowsill
• Last name is smaller to avoid cutting it off
• Still slightly boring

• Uses free space of wall wisely
• Title is easy to read
• Text is shaped around photo elements
• Gives the cover some movement

• Title is covering the focal point (the girl)
• Title doesn’t seem to be incorporated into the design

• By moving title down, we’ve made space for the subject
• Title placement makes cover look less clunky

• Same composition as prior but image is colour-graded
• Embossed title adds texture/depth

• Is defined as the main attraction of your book cover
• This is where you want your readers’ eyes to focus
• Focal points can sometimes define themselves in areas where more contrast happens to be
• Doesn’t have to be the centre of the page. 
• Keep focal point in mind for composition because if you put it in the wrong spot, you could end up drawing your readers’ attention to the wrong area of the cover. 
• The point of most interest in a cover is the focal point, so if you want a particular subject of your book cover, such as a person, to stand out make sure you don’t make the other areas of the cover too high contrast or busy.
• Framing subjects also helps, so be creative!  
• The human eye tends to focus on areas with increased contrast so keep this in mind

• The Host
• The camera has focused on the eye of the model, with the nose bridge and forehead shadowing each corner of the cover
• Helps lead eye to focal point (the eye)
• The Girls
• Blue around the edges encircles the focal point (the girl), leading the viewer’s eye directly to her
• Girl is also scarlet in colour, contrasting the background
• The Hunger Games
• Grey outlines on the cover lead straight to the mockingjay
• Mockingjay is bright gold in comparison to the black background
• Creates contrast, thus viewer’s eye is lead there
• The Female of the Species
• ‘Straight’ composition
• No particular focal point, viewer’s eye instead moves horizontally across the design

• Use the natural shapes and outlines in your design/photo to fill your cover
• Use your space wisely (see examples above)
• Use leading lines to draw attention to your focal point
• Manipulate text to fill empty spaces

• You do not need Photoshop to make a good book cover
• I made my first book covers in GIMP, a free image manipulation program (kinda like Photoshop’s little brother)

• Other tools you may want to use are CreateSpace’s cover templates. 
• You can find these through CreateSpace OR Bookow (my personal fave)

• Graphics tablet
• I use the Huion H610 which I really enjoy! 
• I use this to hand letter, draw silhouettes, create concept art, and so on
• Paper and my Faber Castell India Ink Artist Pens. 
• These are fine tip markers, and are what I used to create the text on I’m Disappointed 
• Thin sharpies and pens will also do the job, and you can always clean any mistakes up in photoshop or gimp.
• A scanner so I can transfer what I’ve hand drawn onto my computer
• If you don’t have a scanner you can take a clear photograph on a camera or phone 
• I also use a few custom marker brushes that now come with the 2018 version of Photoshop
• The main one I use is Kyle’s AM - Watercolour Paper from the art markers set (you have to load these into Photoshop, but if you have PS 2018, you should have access to ‘em). 
• (I’ve lettered everything in this post with that brush)

• Check out THIS post for a master list of my favourite stock photo websites!
• Stocksnap.io
• Unsplash.com
• Pixabay.com 

• Is my main source for finding fonts

• A huge resource I use to find cover inspiration
• I’ll often browse the new releases section to look at new covers and so on
• Easy way to narrow down the genre of cover you’re looking for, as well as the age category

• Check out a masterlist for Photoshop HERE
• GIMP masterlist HERE
• Makes workflow super efficient
• My fave I highly recommend in Photoshop is ctrl > shift > alt > e (merge all layers into new layer) 
• I’ve made TWO custom shortcuts: ctrl > shift > o is now open as layer, and ctrl > shift > alt > r is now rasterize layer (these save so much time!)

• Add texture!
• Texture is a super easy way to add dimension to your book cover
• Try lettering with a paper and marker when starting out
• I find this a lot easier than digital lettering!
• Google is your friendddd
• If you can’t figure out how to do something in Photoshop or GIMP, the internet is a vast depository of information!
• Pay attention to detail
• Cover design is alllll about the small details. Making sure you’ve centred something properly can seriously help in making your cover go from amateur to whoaaa who made thatttt
• Get a second opinion
• Been looking at your screen for 8 hours straight? Ask someone you know what they think of your design! I find this has sparked a lot of secondhand ideas!
• If it doesn’t work out, doesn’t mean it was a fail
• If a particular concept just doesn’t work, don’t worry! As you practice you’ll get better, and you can always revisit the concept for another novel!
• EDIT: a really great suggestion from @sarahkelsiwrites: print out your design if you need a fresh perspective! You’d be surprised by what you notice on screen VS off!

• Line-Quality is improved by building Muscle-Memory.
• You build muscle memory through Drawing-Exercises.
• Art-Style is developed over time through Observation and Routine.
• Routines such as… Drawing-Exercises. 

• Repetition!!!!!
• Recurrence-of-Thematic-Elements (everyone is sad, robots, someone is always shirtless, etc)
• Same Color-Palette used for everything you draw
• Same-Tools (line width, brush set, same paper, canvas size)
• or Same-Program

If you draw on the same size or same scale (A6, A5, A4, A3 | B6, B5 | Letter) or in the same orientation (Landscape or Portrait), it helps you learn Composition intuitively by training you to make use of the space you have. Also it’s easier to print out and frame if you draw on common photo print sizes 4x6, 8x10, etc.

Even if you make a lot of use of Blend/Blur and you’re more of a Painter than a Cel-Shader– deciding to use a Set Personal-Default-Color-Palette instead of randomly choosing them on the Wheel/Triangle-Thing will still give you enough stable consistency.