BOOK COVER DESIGN

Research: Part 3 of What Designers Do With Their Time

2009-08-24T07:44:01-07:00

There are many hidden aspects of a designer’s job that take a lot of time. One of the most important, and often most time-consuming, is research for image accuracy. When a client has a book set in WWII for instance, and asks that a helmet be used on the cover, any old helmet won’t do. The designer needs to find a helmet that was actually in use during that time, in that country, with those particular soldiers. That means combing through online military sites, heading off to the local library, writing eMails and making phone calls.

I remember a few years ago someone wanted a hypodermic needle on the cover of a horror book. The publisher found one, everyone liked it…and only the author’s wife caught the fact that it was a dental needle and not one that would have been used in a hospital, where the book was set.

Many years ago someone pointed out that an early version of Lucy Maude Montgomery’s book Emily of New Moon, did not have a new moon on the cover.

It’s an issue with any medium. The movie The Last House on the Left, featured a scene about a missing boat key. Astute viewers noted that the boat was a newer model Ski Nautique: they don’t use keys, a digital code punched into a keypad is required to start them.

Yes, it can take hours, days and even weeks, depending on how complex the cover is, to research every aspect of it, but it only takes one second for a knowledgeable person to notice a mistake, and a few minutes for him or her to post about it online.

Designer Time Sucks: Part 2 of What Designers Do With Their Time

2009-06-25T10:10:23-07:00

In the first article I discussed the extraordinary length of time it can take to find images, read the license agreement and “clean up” artwork for use on book covers.

Another major part of the designer’s job that people don’t consider to actually be part of the job, is communication. I’m just looking over the eMails I have in my client portfolios (I save all eMails from clients) and here are some rough figures: For a front cover the average number of eMails seems to be around 20. For a full spread (front, back and spine) it’s around 60. For clients who also require collateral items such as sell-sheets, bookmarks and business cards, it goes over 100.

Now, let’s just say it takes two minutes to read each eMail (in fact, it can take considerably longer if there are links to be checked and files to refer to), and another two minutes to respond. That’s four minutes for each communication. Even for a front cover only that’s more than an hour spent on eMails and for the larger projects it’s more than six hours, or the better part of the work day.

As you can see, between looking for the right images and communicating with the client, a designer can easily put in a two to 10 hours without any problem. And that’s without doing any actual work on the design itself.

THE ACTUAL DESIGN WORK

Let’s assume we have found the images and have a pretty good idea of what the client wants. It’s time to start the design work. This is where things can go smoothly…or not.

One common issue designers deal with is trying to keep color constant. Almost all images are provided to us in RGB colors (see article on color here). Unfortunately, a professionally-designed book cover needs to be in another color gamut, usually CMYK. Sometimes switching between CMYK and RGB causes no issues at all, but sometimes you see a drastic change in color and either have to have the client agree to the new colors, or play with the settings until the CMYK display and print samples look close to what you’re seeing on the screen with the RBG settings. Again, we’re talking an hour here…maybe a day to get it right. It’s one of those design holes that you can literally get swept into, and upon finishing think it’s still two o’clock in the afternoon, when in actual fact it’s after eight, supper has gone cold, the kids are in bed and the dog has peed on the floor waiting for you to walk him.

Why don’t agencies sell images in CMYK? Well, because RGB, or red, green, blue are colors that your computer screen and TV use to display images. RGB files are also quite a bit smaller than the CMYK files, so since you can’t see CMYK jpgs or tiffs online and the files are very large, it makes little sense for stock agencies to use this format.

It Should Only Take Five Minutes: Part I of What Designers Do With Their Time

2009-06-14T13:50:07-07:00

“It shouldn’t take more than five minutes or so. I saw a web designer do it once.”

Words that make any print designer cringe. I remember one client I had a few years ago who wanted seven or eight images combined to make a design and he told me it would take only a few minutes.

First, I had to find all these images. Just for the heck of it, you try a search on fotosearch.com, istockphoto.com, bigstockphoto.com or photos.com for some similar group of images, let’s say, “flower.” You can even get more specific and ask for “wild flower” and “isolated” or “object” or “masked” (isolated or object or masked means the flower is the only image, there is no background).

These flowers all have to be similar in style and the proper resolution, so you have to click through each one that has potential and take a closer look. You might have to visit two or three or a dozen stock art sites to find what you’re looking for, assuming it’s available at all and you don’t end up shooting your own images or hiring someone to do it.

Next, you need to make sure you can use the images the way you want (in this instance, print them on a book cover). Royalty Free doesn’t mean “use for anything” like so many people believe. There are all sorts of print and usage restrictions on Royalty Free images. For instance, many companies let you only print 250,000 – 500,000 copies of the image, so the client needs to be made aware of this and the contract has to reflect it, unless you have the client license the image, which is far easier. Some companies won’t allow images to be used on book covers without buying an extended license and many want the company or photographer credited, so you have to keep track of that information. This is all in the End User License Agreement (EULA) for each photo. Some of these are very long and complicated and filled with legalese. The EULA at Photos.com has 4,819 words, and that’s typical. I often have to write the company’s lawyers and ask for clarification. It usually only takes a day or so, but sometimes it can take much longer.

Obviously, that few minutes the client estimated this work would take was up several hours ago and we haven’t even started to design the cover.

The next issue that many non-designers don’t understand is that creating something for the web is vastly different than creating something for print. Print files are much larger and the color profiles are different. Using the convenient tools to click and remove backgrounds that so many graphic programs like Photoshop offer, works great for web images, but rarely do they work so well for print images.

The image below on the left has been lifted from the background and placed on a white background. It doesn’t look too bad for the web, but take a look at the close up below that. Those jagged edges would show up on print, so the designer has to blow that image up and clean up around the edges, one pixel at a time. It’s a tedious task and can take hours if the image is complicated or particularly bad.

It’s easy to see how a “five minute job” can take hours and even days if you’re formatting for print and doing it legally and professionally.

Free Resources for Self-Publishers

2009-05-17T09:47:24-07:00

START A BLOG ON OPRAH.COM

I discovered that you can have a blog at Oprah.com. You can't directly promote or link off the site, but if you would like to post what you know and love and write about, that seems to be allowed. The blogs have been disabled the last few days, though and I'm not sure if they're coming back, or not. Hope so.

PROMOTE YOUR BOOK AND COMPANY

I also discovered shared-self-publishing.com. I seem to be getting hits off of it and it's free for self-publishers and vendors who want to promote their work. The owner seems very helpful and enthusiastic. I hope the site is successful. It's a refreshing change from some of the pay-us-to-promote-you projects out there.

FACEBOOK GROUP

I started a Facebook called Book Production for Self-Publishers and Small Presses, if anyone is interested in joining.

A Fun New Source for Images

2008-12-21T12:45:22-08:00

The Smithsonian Institution has placed placed hundreds of its images on Flickr. The ones I've checked have "no known copyright restrictions." Of course, this doesn't give anyone a guarantee or permit you to infringe on someone's likeness (without permission) or trademark, but it is still a very valuable resource, IMO.

Great resource for non-profit, Christian Publishers and Organizations

2008-11-07T15:33:41-08:00

I have no idea why I haven't blogged about them before, but if you are responsible for the support and video content of a non-profit, Christian organization, you need to check out Muddy River Media. Seriously, don't waste time reading this, get over there!

Muddy River is the brianchild of Mark Fogarty, who lives in Nova Scotia, Canada. Muddy River offers all materials free of charge. The ever-growing collection includes everything from videos, to music, to animations, quizzes and games, street interviews and photographs. These can be used online, during services on backdrops or in almost any other way you want to use them, as long as it's non-commercial.

You can search their archives via Biblical verse, theme, media type, genre or producer and there are even small-group series and instructional series materials available. Quite a time saver if you're working on the creative end of things for your church or organization.

Mark has a strong background in youth ministries, which is readily apparent in his lively, humorous and entertaining style that will capture the attention of today's stimuli-overloaded youth. His instructional videos for ideas to support abstract concepts with entertaining games and visuals are top-notch.

Muddy River has uploaded samples of their videos to YouTube, so you can check them out without having to sign up on the site (which is far easier than they indicate, by the way, although I'm not sure how long my "Heathen Sinner" account will last. I didn't really have a non-profit organization to use and it was required).

Experimenting and what we learn from our children

2008-10-31T22:10:47-07:00

My daughter showed me some neat tricks in Photoshop that I had never tried before (oh, to be young and carefree again). I used a photo of her on a horse and created a grunge-looking book cover. I was really happy with the results. I might add it to my portfolio (perhaps do some more work on it, first), because I really love the imperfections and freedom designers can use on with this type of design. It's usually reserved for fiction, but not always.

I think I've become pigeon-holed in my style and would love to spread my wings a bit, design-wise.

The birds are just the shapes from Photoshop and the flourishes are my own vector creations that I have converted into hi-res Photoshop brushes. I used brushes from Photoshop Resources, as well.

If you look closely to the lower right, you'll see two creases. I got this effect by scanning some pages from a 150-year-old book I own and layering them in so they just barely showed through. That technique also added some of the color and texture you can see.

Confessions of a book cover designer

2008-10-28T20:12:00-07:00

The other day I was in the bookstore looking for a copy of a book I designed a cover for earlier this year. It was produced by a well-known publisher and had a rather impressive promotional budget, so I was anxious to see it "live."

From all accounts, the cover looks good. I breathed a sigh of relief. Why? Well, because you couldn't tell that the entire front cover, which features the author, was pieced together, having once been cut clean in two. How does this happen you ask? Well, easier than you might think.

The cover was approved early on, but the photo of the author required a lot of work. A bald spot needed hair added to it, smile lines and scars were erased, skin color smoothed out, pores reduced, nose hairs eradicated, cracked lips were made to look smooth and "kissable" via the magic of Photoshop (see, India, no camel caps, I'm cured) and crows feet were reduced to the fine lines one would see on a person half the author's age. He looked good, although I'll never watch him on TV with the same enthusiasm again.

At some point during all of these changes, the cover was approved. I flattened most of the touch-up layers and, in order to find the mathematical center of the template, to make sure the title was placed correctly, I used the Photoshop crop tool and cut the cover down to trim size plus bleed. I formatted it and sent it off.

Then they asked if I could make the author's image a bit smaller and drop the title a fraction of an inch, to make room for something they planned to add on their end for some printings. In order to maintain the balance and not leave a gap between image and text, I had to move the image in so far that the trimmed edge was visible on the right side of the cover for about a half-inch. Ooooops.

Panic.

I had several saved versions, but so much fine tuning had been done one crows foot at a time, I wasn't sure I had the final product with the entire right side of the celebrity. I also had altered the color slightly, so it was no longer exactly the same as the original.

As my supportive family looked on and mocked, I blew the image up as far as I could get it and pieced in the right side of the photo, matching it, literally, one pixel at a time. I was squinting and seeing spots before my eyes by the time I was finished, but after a few print proofs and having others give it a close visual, I decided you couldn't tell.

And you can't.

Whew.

New Widget great for authors

2008-10-24T06:04:45-07:00

One of the authors on a forum I belong to posted about this nifty gadget and I can certainly see its usefulness. If you add the Smartlinks widget, anyone clicking on a linked book cover image, or just a text link to the book, will get a small, pop-up box featuring the book cover, a blurb and a list of almost every place you can purchase the book, along with other details.

For text links, you will see a small icon, indicating that Smartlinks is active, like this: Mommy Calls by Dr. Tanya. Simply click on the little icon to the right of the link to view all the information about that book.

It's easy to install and can be customized. But, most importantly, it's free!

You can check out how it works on the AdaptiveBlue's website.

The company also offers a brief, video tutorial on how to add the Smartlinks widget to your site and how to customize the widgets, so they work with actual cover images.

Sanity saving plugin for Adobe Illustrator

2008-10-18T13:06:46-07:00

A regular client needed me to do some updates on a cover I'd created in Illustrator CS some time ago. Usually this is no problem, but this time he wanted me to underline bits and pieces of words throughout the text. Problem. Illustrator does not offer any faux text properties: no strikethrough, no underlines, no faux bold or faux italic.

In order to create the underline, I'd have to do it manually, measuring and lining up every little line, and then readjusting all the lines every time the text shifted for changes.

There had to be an easier way, so off I went to Google and sure enough, there were some work-arounds to the problem. But, none were so easy as this handy little free download that you simply add on through Character Styles. Once installed, all you need to do is highlight the text you want underlined, chose the new underline option and there it is!

You'll find the download link in the first comment on this blog.