Unit #2- Lesson 5 – The Cover Design

The book market is a crazy competitive one.  The cover of one’s book is the “make it or break it” part of your book because if no one buys it it cannot flourish. The design of the cover needs to be carefully considered. The options are several: Choose an image from inside the book and turn it into a cover? Make a new one? Do a close-up of an image? Have just the character and a few items on the cover? Make it busy to attract attention? Make is simple to get just a few ideas across?

 

Some notes for designing your cover:

Know the age group of your audience and target the cover design to them

Design the book title in an interesting way and make sure it stands out from the pictures – us a different colour for it, or put it boldly against a plain area, give it good size,… but most of all make sure that it is easily readable.

Ensure that your front cover image shows readers a preview of the story inside – this is where the illustration is critical – what will the reader see on the cover that will cause them to want to see more?

Make sure your cover creates curiosity

Choose colors and text design that matches the mood of the story – use your knowledge of colour theory

Do not overfill the cover design!!  Less is more.  Some blank space gives places for the title and the author and illustrator’s names.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel-  Look at the front covers from famous children’s books – note what you like and why it stands out.

Design your children’s book cover in the same spirit of other children’s books. If it is too wild and weird, your audience will not know what to make of your book, so probably will not buy it.

 

Your cover design should be the same size and dimensions as your pages.

It needs to be made with the same materials as your pages.

It needs to contain:

Title – should take up 10 to 20 % of cover space

Name of the author and Your name as the illustrator written in smaller lettering than the title and located in a less conspicuous spot on the page (often times the bottom)

Image that promotes the book – these should take up the rest of the page space

 

Your book cover design needs to be finished by Wednesday, June 10.

I will post the next and final lesson on Monday, June 8, showing you the “publishing” process.  Your goal is to complete  publishing the book by June 15.

 

**  A reminder: ALL overdue assignments need to be submitted to me by email by June 17.  I am evaluating your works and completing the final report card by the weekend of June 20-21.   **

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