Impactful Book Cover Design: An Art Director's Perspective
Additional Research
A course by John Gall , Designer and Creative Director
About the video: Additional Research
Overview
“Now, I will show you a case study that shows the importance of researching an author’s history as a potential place for ideas. ”
In this video lesson John Gall addresses the topic: Additional Research, which is part of the Domestika online course: Impactful Book Cover Design: An Art Director's Perspective. Learn how to design meaningful book covers that capture the attention of readers alongside an award-winning designer.
Partial transcription of the video
“ Additional Research You have learned how to read a manuscript. Now, we'll learn the importance of additional research, including researching an author's background. During the course of a design project, additional research may be needed. For instance, you may need to source a piece of art. How do you find it? Many museums have their collections online in high-res form and are sometimes even free to use. Although I tend to avoid traditional stock sources mostly, there are times when they come in handy, as we saw on this cover earlier. I needed a picture of a hummingbird for this particula...”
This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.
Course summary for: Impactful Book Cover Design: An Art Director's Perspective
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Category
Design -
Software
Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop -
Areas
Art Direction, Editorial Design, Graphic Design

John Gall
A course by John Gall
John Gall is a designer, artist, author, editor, and teacher. He is currently the creative director of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. His design and illustration work for Knopf, Vintage Books, Abrams Books, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Criterion Collection, and Nonesuch Records has been recognized by the AIGA, Art Directors Club, Print, Graphis, and American Illustration. Known for his book cover designs for authors like Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, Jennifer Egan, and Vladimir Nabokov, his work is featured in the books By Its Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design, and Graphic: Inside the Sketchbooks of the World's Great Graphic Designers.
John has written about graphic design covering an array of topics from the history of Grove Press to contemporary skateboard graphics, and is the author of Sayonara Home Run! The Art of the Japanese Baseball Card. He has also been the editor of two bestselling design books: Pretty Much Everything by Aaron Draplin and Sunday Sketching by Christoph Niemann. John is an internationally-exhibited artist and published a book of his personal work John Gall Collages 2008-2018 in 2018. He has served on the board of AIGA/NY, as an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts, and is a frequent lecturer.
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