Book Cover Illustration: Unraveling the Essence of a Story

Book Cover Illustration: Unraveling the Essence of a Story

“Dear Students, We’ve reached the end of this course! I hope you have enjoyed it! Let’s look back at what we have done together: We have looked at some of the secrets to a good book cover, also very useful for other uses like posters or music covers. You have chosen your own text for your cover by thinking rapidly of 3 or 4 possible visual associations. Let’s see if it’s a novel by some Nobel prize author, or a bodice ripper, or a thriller or something about polyamorous vampires from space. I also want you to keep in mind the dos and don’ts. For example, do not steal an idea, try to make style and message coherent, color is important, and even if you have no original idea always have in mind that beautiful style trumps it all. We’ve searched for ideas based on the text, we did several thumbnail sketches to find the one that we could take further. With the help of our image material, we built the Frankenstein's monster collage. That one is not always necessary, but it can help you as a crutch when finally drawing your image. I did my drawing by hand with pencils and then went on in Photoshop and Procreate. But that’s just one of many options, it depends very much on your subject. Think about the way YOU want to see your image: maybe yours is best done in watercolor, in college, with a felt tip pen or in ink? Or in Illustrator or Photoshop? It must be a decision between the technique that you control best and the look you want to achieve for this particular project. In the end make sure you check for flaws, maybe let it ly for a night, and come back with fresh eyes in the morning. Don’t show it to quickly to the world, once it’s out there it’s hard to take it back! We’ve also seen that there are always several possible outcomes, I’ve shown you two alternative solutions to my own cover. It’s sometimes hard to give up on an idea and restart from cero, but in the real world, that is what is expected of a professional illustrator. I would be delighted if this course made you look at book covers and any conceptual illustration in a new way from now on. And I’d be even happier if it had sparked new ideas and a desire to create your own images in your own unique style! Please share your illustration with me and the other participants! I can’t wait to see your cover! Be a bit patient if you don’t hear back from me the same day, being a teacher on Domestika is not my only job, but I will give you feedback. If you have some tips for your colleagues and me, about techniques or inspiration or books… share them! It will improve this course! Until then, thank you so much for subscribing and watching. I think I’ll have a cup of tea now. Bye! ”

Partial transcription of the video

“Final project This is the end of this course. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I did. I do not want to leave before taking this opportunity to review what we have learned so you can finally start working on your own project. We've started this course by going through the history of book covers. Then we've dug into some of the most important tendencies when it comes to designing book covers to give you an easy entry into your task. I gave you tips how to choose your own book, and I showed you how to review and analyze what others have done with the same book before you. Now, if you're ill...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Book Cover Illustration: Unraveling the Essence of a Story

• Level: Beginner
• 99% positive reviews (182)
• 3158 students
• 5 units
• 15 lessons (2h 21m)
• 7 downloads

• Category

  Illustration

• Software

  Adobe Photoshop

• Areas

  Digital Illustration, Editorial Illustration, Storytelling, Traditional illustration