CREATING A WINNING BOOK COVER
At its most basic level, a good book cover design will attract readers to purchase your book. One that will pique the reader’s interest and communicate within seconds that the pages behind the cover are worth their attention and time.
Before looking at the cover creation process, it’s crucial to understand the five elements that if effectively executed can contribute to a winning cover design, namely: composition, genre, tone, visual impact, and clarity.
Composition: The visual framing of the cover design and interaction between elements such as the typography, images, colors, and planes, to create symmetry, proportion, and rhythm.
Genre: The visual aspect of a cover in accord with the literary quality and genre of the book.
Tone: The suitable visual code to convey a certain genre of the book.
Visual impact: The attention-grabbing qualities of a cover and its capacity to trigger an impulsive and emotional response.
Clarity: The clearness of a cover design to consistently and accurately convey the message.
According to our head chef, Xavier Comas, the first and most important step in creating a successful book cover is filling out the brief template in as much detail as possible, providing any key elements that might yield visual potential or affect the design. For a fiction book cover, this should include: trim size, the book’s genre and tone of voice, synopsis, key characters and elements, primary and secondary target readers, key selling points, back cover text if available, and samples of covers in the same category you like. For non-fiction covers, this would also include the table of contents and sample chapters.
Filling out the brief template in as much detail as possible also helps highlight the key ideas that should be incorporated in a book’s cover design and, in turn, identify those that can be omitted. Many first-time authors fear missing details from the story and are eager to incorporate as many visual elements as possible, however, being too inclusive can crowd and potentially weaken the cover.
The next step is conceptualization; the visual translation of the message communicated through a book’s cover design. Often, our cover cooks will start with hand sketching on paper as a way to explore impromptu ideas. The most feasible of these concepts make their way to the first round of sample cover designs. If the brief was accurate, there is a high chance that the author will choose one of these designs.
The execution of this concept then falls to our cover cooks as they bring your book to life through a versatile range of in-house image-making capabilities, including traditional and vector-based illustration, hand lettering, custom photography and 3D rendering, while also considering the composition, genre, tone, visual impact and clarity.
Designs using hand-drawing, photography, 3D rendering and vector-based illustration.
At the Coverkitchen studio, our cover cooks will present three sample designs for you to taste within one working week of filling in the design brief. After selecting your preferred cover design, fine adjustments are made, such as color hue and typographic composition or alternative font choices, over three more rounds of tasting. It’s this fine-tuning of nuances that help convey the message with the right tone of voice.
While browsing for books, whether it be in-store or online, readers often choose titles based upon an emotional connection with a cover; an unconscious decision to select a book and read the back cover text, sometimes turning to the first page to get a taste for more. Rarely are readers drawn to designs that depict what they might be feeling in that moment, but rather what they want to be feeling.
If the brief was filled in with as much detail as possible; the conceptualization was effective, and the design fits the genre and tone while displaying both visual impact and clarity, then an emotional connection is likely to occur. This connection may be invisible to the reader, but to both authors and designers alike, it is a clear sign of a winning book cover.
If you’re ready to release the full flavor of your book and bring it to life with a winning cover of your own, get in touch with our chef!