Behind the Scenes: How I designed my book cover
The most important part of an unread book is the book cover. It’s what draws us in as readers and allows us to make a quick assessment—Does this look like something I’d be interested in?
While I’ve read plenty of times that authors shouldn’t design their own covers, I minored in design in college and wanted to at least attempt it, both to save money and also because it’s fun.
I won’t understate the amount of work the whole process took, so be warned if you are going this route—it took a good chunk of time. But for readers as well, here’s a fun peek behind the process that looked something like this:
Research. What do books published recently in my genre generally look like? I found that Young Adult books today use beautiful, highly illustrative covers with big titles that are readable at thumbnail size.
Sketch. What might I want on my cover that represents the book? For a long time, I thought that I would probably use an owl on the cover since it’s a strong symbol in Mist & Shadow. I sorted through ideas in my imagination and on paper. So many possibilities! I also had an idea of what I wanted the letters to look like and sketched out different arrangements.
3. Design a concept. I sketched out a rough idea of what I wanted the cover to look like (see above.) I used an affordable Photoshop alternative, Affinity Photo, to set up a document at my chosen trim size, 8.5”x5”. I grabbed a photo of an owl off the internet and traced over the shape with the Pen tool. My plan was to have the owl, then mask an illustrated treeline on the bottom of the owl.
The moment I dropped the illustration, my brain went “oh! I like this!” The owl concept was dropped (it wasn’t turning out how I wanted anyway) and that treeline made the final cover. I went back and purchased the image to get the high resolution and the rights to use it commercially.
4. Digitize. A lot of the total design time was actually spent digitizing my letters (Repeat: a LOT). That process took two attempts, since I had to go back and redraw my letters in my sketchbook more carefully. To do this I just took a photo of the letters in my sketchbook, dropped the photo in Affinity, traced over the letters with the Pen tool, and then made minute adjustments.
5. Refine. With my letters and treeline in place, I went about finalizing the cover by adding mist elements to reflect the title. Something definitely needed to be added to fill out the blank white upper half of the cover, so I tested out some free mist images with transparent backgrounds to place at the top. Then I downloaded a free Affinity smoke brush and drew over the letters I’d made so that they were filled with mist (this took a couple attempts to get it exactly how I wanted.) After adding my author name at the bottom, I printed off the results on my home printer just to see how it printed versus its appearance on screen.
So there you have it! I never tracked my hours spent on designing my own cover, but wouldn’t be surprised if told it was over 40. From sifting through book covers for design inspiration, to drawing my letters (SERIOUSLY, A LOT OF TIME), and then adding the obsessive finishing touches, the whole process was a lot of work but was worth it, since I got to determine exactly how it looked. I’m still very happy with it.
If you have design experience, take a stab at it. A book I recommend is Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton. It was my college graphic design textbook and a great resource for anyone learning about design. You’ll never look at text the same way again.