Cover Design

[jaxx6166]

So, I just got myself a trial copy of Aperture (w/Toonit!) and GIMP and Inkscape.

Anyone ever play with these? What are your thoughts on them for creative design/coverart?

What styles/fonts/etc. do you guys use?

What catches your eye on a (digital) bookstore?

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by jaxx6166

So, I just got myself a trial copy of Aperture (w/Toonit!) and GIMP and Inkscape.

Anyone ever play with these? What are your thoughts on them for creative design/coverart?

What styles/fonts/etc. do you guys use?

What catches your eye on a (digital) bookstore?

I pretty much use Gimp / Inkscape exclusively now, but I did use Photoshop and Illustrator for a long time. For me some book covers are works of art and some are merely great designs and have been thought out more than just slapping some text over a picture. Never ever ever ever use Comic Sans (or derivatives), it's the worst typeface on earth, and probably in the Universe.

At the moment I'm going in a completely different direction with cover art and making it part of a 'whole' design, with the website and the rest being part of that design. In that vein I've colour coded the covers, making them flat and uniform across the board. Gollanz did this in the 80's for their hardbacks-they had bright yellow jackets with nothing but the title and author on there (really caught your eye wherever you were in the book shop or library).

Here's the original and the new version to show you what I'm doing. Also, because I'm doing the new color-coded versions in Inkscape they're vectors, which means I can scale in any direction with little degradation.

[jaxx6166]

I'd probably be the minority here, but I like the original better than your new edition. The vampire skull is kind of..strange for a western (which I must read - - give me now!)

Do you draw every cover by hand? Comission an artist? Or just go trolling the interwebs for CC photos to use and abuse?

I like the look of illustrated covers, but I can't draw a stick figure. So, I discovered a plugin for Aperture called "ToonIt!" which basically rotoscopes your image into something vageuly resembling an illustration. I used to use a similar present when i played with Poser/Daz3D, but the results were always subpar.

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by jaxx6166

I'd probably be the minority here, but I like the original better than your new edition. The vampire skull is kind of..strange for a western (which I must read - - give me now!)

Do you draw every cover by hand? Comission an artist? Or just go trolling the interwebs for CC photos to use and abuse?

I like the look of illustrated covers, but I can't draw a stick figure. So, I discovered a plugin for Aperture called "ToonIt!" which basically rotoscopes your image into something vageuly resembling an illustration. I used to use a similar present when i played with Poser/Daz3D, but the results were always subpar.

I can't draw anything, maybe the odd doodle here and there. I use free images from places like SXU and just let my imagination run wild.

One of the things you might want to consider with any design, is consistency. The red skull/western thing makes no sense because it's taken out of context of the whole. Once it's within the whole you'll see the red skull is part of the 'Horror' section of my pulp imprint. As below:





All the books in any one section are color-coded, branding them and giving the whole company a specific 'look'.

Here are the covers for the Kin series, again it's all about consistency across the design.

Oh and here's the original cowboy image as it was before I messed with it:

[jaxx6166]

And then I guess its just a matter of playing with filters/shadows/brushes to get the desired result? That SXC webpage is probably the most amazing site ever. Now I need some tutorials...off to google

[jaxx6166]

Gimpology

After spending about three hours searching for tutorials (and finding some unsavory spamilicious sites) I discovered this page. It's got a whole boatload of tutorials for everyone else that may be interested. The most useful ones that I've found so far were about blending multiple images together to create one (Steampunk and blending.)

And then there's THIS one for creating a "typography poster," which I plan to basterdize when I go home to make a cover.

My eyes are open and I am in love. Now to play later.

[jaxx6166]

Brushes are amazing. You should use them

[Dusty Bottoms]

Just to open up the design aspect a little more in this thread. I've found it amazing how the restrictions of modern web design (CSS markup etc) force design into a different direction and that's not always necessarily bad. Because you have to think about bandwidth and accessibility you have to think differently, create more broadly than you would have to for covers (where the limitations aren't as restrictive). Here's what I came up with over the weekend... not finished, but I'm only just learning CSS at any level (the bottom level at the moment ) The introduction text becomes the navigation for areas of the site. Instead of a visual button (which takes up space and bandwidth) coloured and linked text does the job.

EDIT: And also, when designing its not just book-covers, but logos for series (which my pulp venture will be focusing on). You want the total experience across the board. Logos are also below for the (tentative) starting line up of the company.

[DrZoidberg]

*start of shameless plug*
My wife is a professional artist and does, among other things, book covers. So far she's only done erotica, but she can do anything she's asked to do. She's got quite a few now for a number of authors and publishers.

www.paintinator.net

*end of shameless plug*

[jaxx6166]

I like the logos. It's making me think more outside the box about what I should do as far as "branding."

What do you think the best dimensions to start with for a cover design are? How big should they be? I'm using 768x1024 px right now. It seems like a good size, maybe too big though.

I'm finding inkscape a bit intimidating right now, but Gimp is a lot more user friendly.

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by jaxx6166

I like the logos. It's making me think more outside the box about what I should do as far as "branding."

What do you think the best dimensions to start with for a cover design are? How big should they be? I'm using 768x1024 px right now. It seems like a good size, maybe too big though.

I'm finding inkscape a bit intimidating right now, but Gimp is a lot more user friendly.

I go slightly narrower at 740x1024px as it just feels the right size to me. Inkscape, like most vector programs, has a narrower role in design. For logos it is a must as you need to scale the logos far more frequently and anything done in the Gimp or any raster based program would come out looking like crap (jagged edges etc). Conversely if you use Inkscape to do covers it always looks a lot crisper but you lose the organic feel you can get from the Gimp. Here are some new covers done in the Gimp which I really couldn't replicate in Inkscape (I tried, believe me )

Oh and make sure you have the SAVE FOR WEB plugin installed in the Gimp, it'll save a lot of headaches down the line if you need to optimise.

[Dusty Bottoms]

Here's what I'm working on now. Combined using Inkscape and Gimp. Inkscape for the shapes (Moon, Deco Rays, Buildings), Gimp for texture overlay and text. I'm going for a Deco/40's look but I'm not all the way there yet. Still, with free software on a free Operating System (Ubuntu) I don't think it's halfway bad.

[jaxx6166]

LOL. Dusty, that's funny. This is what I just finished up. I wanted to put the city in a glass bubble, but that isn't working too well. =)

I'm an idiot...It took me this long to discover I can upload photos directly to the site. I thought it only accepted word files and stuff. Duh. There will be no more imageshack uploads

[jaxx6166]

How'd you manage gradient text? I couldn't figure that out..

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by jaxx6166

How'd you manage gradient text? I couldn't figure that out..

Write out your text. Highlight by clicking inside the text. Create new layer (the highlight should still be showing). Apply gradient to the highlight on the new layer, it will fill the highlight with gradients. At least that's how I've been doing it.

EDIT: You should see it in the picture below. The highlighted text has a dotted flashy line around it, you then 'fill with gradient' or use 'gradient tool' on an empty layer.