Book Cover Designs

                  Adding Blurb text to my book cover designs

          

       

For this lesson, we learnt how to apply the blurb text, editing the text from InDesign to Illustrator. To place the text, I firstly applied a text box on an A4 page, and then went to Type-Fill it with placeholder text. By doing so the text in Latin saved before automatically appeared in the text box. I chose the Bauhaus 93 font for my first blurb option, sized 6pt. After successfully doing this I cut and pasted the styled text onto Illustrator, aligning the text in a different manner to suit my cover design.  I repeated this process for the second time on another book cover, but using the font of Apple Chancery sized 5pt. aligned to the left bottom corner of the page.  

For my second book cover for street art, I decided to design my front cover on Photoshop before doing anything on Illustrator. I added different effects onto the cover as well as mainly using various brush tools and images to make the cover stand out. 

I firstly started with the cover title, choosing the font 'PotagolTC'. I used the liquify tool to change the form of the title, making it slightly asymmetrical so it blended with the cover. I then used the 'splatter' effect tool to change the style of the brush, and made it look as if the background was spray painted in various colors. Some images were also cropped with the quick selection tool, along with a border of colors splattered around them. The images of the tiger, wolf and arrow were searched for non-commercial purposes only. I changed them by applying a variety of effects to make them my original design.

For my third book cover, I firstly used Photoshop to edit the front cover by using the quick selection tool to place images onto the background. I also painted a few of the images in relation to the cover. I used the warp tool to change the arch of the title for a better effect. It was then styled using the blend options, with the font of Ebrima. 

I think that I prefer the Graffiti book cover as I learnt how to use new tools in the process of creating it. It also stands out really well, however my second book cover of Street Art stands out really well as I decided to use many colors on it. I also spent a lot of time on creating the front cover in Photoshop, using different tools for different effects. I mainly used the tools I learnt to use throughout the lessons, such as the warp tool, pen tool, color selection, and how to style headings or text in different ways. I also learnt how to use the quick selection and lasso tool, and adding different effects onto covers or pictures such as the dispersion effect, among others related to photography editing.

                                      Graffiti Book Cover

                                        Using Illustrator

                                               

         I created this Graffiti book cover by using Adobe Illustrator. Firstly, I opened a new page by a suitable size for the back, front and spine of the book cover to be visible. I added the rulers by going to 'view'-'ruler'-'show rulers' option, and by finally dragging the ruler along the page by dragging from one side of the page, until it reached 210cm across from the left, and from then, 15 more cm along. I then started off by typing in the title of the book cover, and changing it's font and colour in relation to the style of 'Bauhaus', by the artist Bayer, Herbert (year 1923). I then added multiple layers containing the black background of the book, the text and images to prevent any confusion of what part of the book I'm working on. The year of the book cover could be based on the 70's or 80's, because of the colours and images.

Using the warp, emboss and bevel technique

 



















For this font style effect, I used Photoshop and focused on using the warp tool to change the alignment of the text. There were many options to change the arch of each text, or if it was either facing vertically or horizontally for a greater effect. I also used the bevel and emboss effect to make the titles stand out differently.

I used Photoshop to style my previous primary research on texture. For a successful outcome, I firstly inserted another tab in order to paste the original image of the texture by using the ' Rectangular Marquee' tool. I did this to change the size of the file, in order for it to be suitable for when I want to use them for the book covers (21 by 21cm, with a resolution of 150 pix). I then used a light, coloured background on a separate layer as part of the process of adding different effects. I used the adjustments tool for more style options

       
                   This book cover was influenced by the 1970's cover styles. This colour scheme was chosen since a 1970's cover usually contained either dull or bright colours, such as yellow, brown or black. In order to achieve this effect, I masked out the image using the lasso tool, lowering the opacity in order to blend in the image with the background. I also styled the font of 'Graffiti' using the text and blending options, and decided to mix in the title with the paint spray for a better effect.

                                                                       Typography

   For this task, I used Adobe Illustrator. We were mainly  focusing on using the 'knife' tool in order to create this effect.  I firstly opened a new page in Illustrator, which was of course, landscape. Then I typed in the title 'Blowfish Angels' in large letters that fit on the whole page. After doing so, I went to 'object' and 'expand' in order to select the letters to be able to change them. I then selected a few of the letters to change the colour, using the 'knife' tool. After doing this with all the letters, I then labeled the letters by the form of the colour.

I used C.R.A.P (Contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity) to help my designs stand out. I used alignment to position the information, title and image on my mural poster. This was done firstly on Photoshop in order to crop the image to a legit size, and then placed on Illustrator to change the effect of the poster design in order for it to become more clear and the details more viewable, by changing the brightness and stroke level. Contrast was used for this process. For the second image, I mainly used the live paint bucket tool to colour the person right after painting the outline in black.