Designing a Book Cover

Course details

Join author Nigel French in Designing a Book Cover as he walks through several approaches to creating professional, engaging book covers using Adobe Creative Suite applications. This course covers document setup, composition and layout, illustration, typography essentials, and printing. Exercise files accompany the course.

Learning objectives
Researching the design and brainstorming ideas
Setting up a document in InDesign or Illustrator
Choosing typefaces, colors, shapes, and imagery
Hand-drawing type and using different type treatments
Creating illustrations from scratch
Using and adapting photographs for illustration
Preparing the book covers for printing

Concepts

1. Introduction

01 - Welcome
02 - Using the exercise files

2. Getting Started

03 - The project brief
04 - Doing research
05 - Setting up a document in InDesign CS5
06 - Setting up a document in InDesign CS4
07 - Putting your InDesign CS5 document on a grid
08 - Putting your InDesign CS4 document on a grid
09 - Setting up the document in Illustrator and placing it on a grid

3. The Big Book Solution

10 - Creating hand-drawn type with the Blob Brush tool
11 - Using Live Paint to color type
12 - Choosing typefaces
13 - Creating a simple illustration using the Pen and Gradient tools
14 - Applying type effects
15 - Manual tracing
16 - Using the gradient and transparency effects

4. The Typographic Solution

17 - Distressed type
18 - More distressed type
19 - Using mirrored type
20 - Using giant wraparound text
21 - Starting text on the cover

5. The Abstract Solution

22 - Illustrating concepts with abstract shapes and transparency
23 - Representing the book content with icons

6. The Illustration Solution

24 - Using historic photography
25 - Using Illustrator to create a simple illustration
26 - Using gradient mesh in Illustrator to create a simple illustration
27 - Using Live Trace on a photograph
28 - Using black-and-white images creatively

7. Beyond the Front Cover

29 - Developing a book set
30 - Designing the back cover
31 - Designing the flaps
32 - Designing the spine

8. Printing

33 - Using spot varnish
34 - Preflighting your document
35 - Preparing the PDF

Conclusion

36 - Goodbye