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10+ Book Cover Designs
Whether you like it or not, a book cover‘s design will affect a potential reader’s impression of a book. This is the reason why publishing companies spend millions of dollars every year just to commission artists and designers to create original and captivating cover designs.
It does not even matter if you are publishing a fiction book, a business book, or a photo book. What is important is that a writer and his or her publisher gets their hands on a good book cover design for any of these book types. Because doing so can help open the doors to more book buyers and readers. And that is what any book writer would want.
Elements of A Good Book Cover Design
In this article, we share to you different examples of book cover design templates along with various tips on how to create a good book cover design. And to start off, we have listed down the key elements that should be found in any book cover design for it to translate well to the visual senses of any potential buyer and reader.
- Color Palette. Choose a color palette that compliments your book’s genre and content. It does not matter whether you want a typography-dominated cover design or a photographic cover design. There will be that one color combination that will help tell the story of your book more easily. For example, monochromatic or contrasting color schemes may work well for speculative fiction books and business books.
- Right Layout. Following a good cover design layout means you arrange all the text and graphic elements in a visually appealing and meaningful way. The best book cover designs typically follow a simple and somewhat unintentional book layout. Yet, it is this specific composition of different elements that makes it a good cover design.
- Captivating Typography. The typeface family and font style choice is another requirement for a good book cover design. It is usually the book title, the author name, and the book’s tagline that will need to be written in a typographic font. Choosing two or three font styles that belong to the same typeface family will help create a sense of unity in a book cover design.
- Book Title. Another important element that should be present for an effective book cover design is the book’s title itself. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to formulating a book title. What is important is that you choose a title that complements both the book’s genre, topic, or intended audience and the cover design itself.
- Back Cover Design and Blurb. A classic book cover design does not end on the book’s front page. The cover design planning should extend to the book’s back cover and the book blurb’s formatting. If a book’s front cover design manages to pique a person’s interest leading this person to read the back cover blurb, book designers should make sure that the back cover also showcases the same artistic and textual hooks. When a book’s front and back cover designs are put together well, publishers and authors are more likely to get a book sale.
- Visual Harmony. When you keep all the above elements in mind, you can hopefully choose a combination that helps you achieve visual harmony. This can mean going for a cover design that is pleasing to the eye, meaningful, and easy to transfer over to different book cover sizes.
Writing a book and publishing it can be a long and difficult journey. But when armed with the key traits that a good book cover design should have, this last step in the publishing process will be easier to navigate in.
10 Book Cover Designs
Embedded below are multiple book cover design templates available in various template formats. Browse through these downloadable and customizable templates until you find a cover design that will suit your personal tastes and your book’s needs.
Chapter Book Cover Template
Children’s Birthday Book Cover
Children’s Book Cover Template
Children’s Fashion Book Cover Template
Children’s Funny Book Cover Design
Children’s Story Book Cover Template
Fiction Book Cover Template
Kid’s Birthday Book Cover Template
Story Book Cover Template
Steps to Create an Excellent Book Cover Design Layout
Listed below are a few simple tips that anyone book designer should follow if they want to create amazing book cover designs. Read each tip and be inspired.
1. Read the book’s manuscript or a synopsis
Knowing what a book is truly about by reading a manuscript or a synopsis can be one of the best things that any designer can do. By doing this, you will discover what the book and the author’s background, the book genre classification, subject, and other important nuances that will allow you to create a better cover design.
2. Avoid exposition
When designing a book cover (especially a fiction book cover), it is also important not to use a literal interpretation of what the book is all about as your cover design. Remember, a good cover design should not only attract a reader’s attention through the use of unique colors and typography, but the overall cover design should make a reader think and/or ask questions. An exemption may occur in the case of children’s books and illustrated storybooks.
3. Attract readers using imagery
Using imagery in book cover designs is best achieved by using symbols and other design elements to tell a story. The combination of all these elements should make a reader want to know more about the book.
4. Try to use different image effects
Another useful book cover design tip is to use different image design effects. If you are creating a photographic book cover, these effects may include but are not limited to using bokeh effects, blur effects, and even magnification effects. As for typographic book cover designs, you combine the use of web fonts and actual handwriting fonts to help tell your story.
5. Add a subtitle or tagline
Adding a subtitle or tagline is another helpful cover design tip that the most effective book covers all share. Take a look at the top New York Times Best-Sellers list this month—non-fiction and business books to your latest crime thriller book—and you will see that these books will usually have a tagline that will help reinforce the effect of the title and cover design.
Of course, deciding on a book’s title and subtitle may not fall in the hands of the book designer all the time. So if you are a designer and you think that adding a tagline can help enhance your book cover design, suggest it to the publisher or the author. Things may work out your way and you will end up with a better book cover design.
Types of Book Covers
Book covers can be divided into the specific audience or readers a book targets. The three main book cover types based on this classification system are as follows:
- Business or Non-Fiction Book Covers – For books written in the business and self-help genre (i.e. textbook, autobiography, and other non-fiction book titles)
- Photo Book Covers – For books intended to be photo books and some kind of visual memorabilia
- Fiction Book Covers – For books written in different literary genres (i.e. contemporary and science fiction books)
Book Cover Sizes
For traditionally published books that are printed on offset printers, the standard book cover size is 6 inches by 9 inches or 152 mm by 229 mm.
For other kinds of books (especially those that are self-published) that are printed on laser printers, they will typically follow the 5.5 inches by 8.5 inches or 140 mm by 216 mm book cover size. Other book cover sizes are 8.5 inches by 11 inches ( or 216 mm by 280 mm) and 8.5 inches by 8.5 inches.
Book Cover FAQs
What is a book cover design template?
A book cover design template is a pre-made digital file that already comes with a text and other graphic design elements intended to create a book cover. Since they are pre-made, anyone using these templates will just have to make minor design and text edits before they can be printed out.
What tools do you use to create book cover designs?
Creating a book cover design is just like making any kind of graphic design project. You can use graphic design software tools like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, or even Microsoft Publisher.
Where to get book cover design inspiration?
Most authors of traditionally published books get little to no influence on how their book cover designs will turn since major publishers will have a separate design team to do this job. If you have a specific look in mind that you wish to share with the design team, it may be best to compile them in Pinterest boards and have the design team take a look at it for design inspiration.
Are cover designs for self-published books different?
Essentially, designing a cover for a self-published book works the same way as any kind of traditionally published book. But what you should keep in mind when creating an e-book cover design is to make sure that the cover design is optimized for various web and e-Reader thumbnail formats.
At Template.net, you can access both free and premium printable and web templates. Use these templates to help you complete your tasks quickly and easily.
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