Rachel Udin
Banned
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2010
- Messages
- 1,514
- Reaction score
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- Location
- USA... sometimes.
- Website
- www.racheludin.com
Just a general thought... though authors won't generally think of this, but it's the same as it is for books:
Commercial art COMMUNICATES something. Even with all these tips and guidelines to creating art, what is the central rule to all of it, is that if the design fails to communicate, you've failed.
More than the rules about color, negative space, positive space, foreground, background, middle ground, etc. Your first job is the communicate to your audience what your book is about on your cover. if a piece of art can say 1,000 words, what do you want those 1,000 words to say to the reader about to buy your book?
I say this, because I, too, didn't get it. But after I took design classes, and took art classes, my drawings started to tell their own internal stories of sorts. A cover can tell the story for you, without giving away the ending, without using physical words. And that's kinda the art of graphic design.
When do you break a guideline? When it serves to communicate your message better.
For a cover, I would look for the following:
1. What is the genre? Can I tell from the cover?
2. What is the tone of the story?
3. Are there themes or elements from the story that give a nuance to the *other* things without re-enforcing them?
I always start here though some of my clients don't like it. (Since I do websites, they are more going on about the bells and whistles, and I'm trying to get them to concretely tell me what they want the website to function to *do* for the *client* first.)
Genre: Mystery
Setting: Thailand.
Themes: hardboiled, noir, gritty. Riverboats.
Tone: Sarcastic. Maybe with a little Irony.
The obvious on the nose choice would be to go for the open air market in Thailand. Go for some slangy Thai-ish font, slap it on the background like the MV Dirty put in a dead body and call it a day.
But like with stories, you want it to tell a story. YOUR story. And don't give people easy.
If your blurb reads, "On the backstreets of Thailand, there is a new boss in town." Then maybe you've got the wrong image.
What are you trying to say with this cover besides murder in Thailand? What does your story eventually say to the reader?
Some of the best covers I've seen are where I read the story and the cover gradually makes more and more sense as I look at it over and over again. The cover didn't give away the ending at all, but little details come out that make me appreciate the art on the front more. It becomes less of a marketing tool, but kind of joins with the book as one entity and you don't know it, but when you do finish, that's what you find. Just like subtle is good in stories, so it is with covers.
I have to say, I'm a huge fan of Michael Whelan covers. Because I'd often glance at the cover during the course of the story and then little details he'd put in make sense suddenly. (He says he reads the books before making covers, which make his art richer as a marketing tool)
You, who know the book the best should know what it's trying to communicate in the art. Put that as your first directive, and no matter what rules you break, you will probably end up breaking them well if you break them for that reason.
Nanowrimo had a book cover contest. And one of the graphic artists chose a book about a kid with OCD. It broke every rule about typography very subtly, slamming me with errors, but it *worked* because it communicated to me the meaning of the book through those type of errors--the type of thing that would drive someone with OCD mad.
The design works as a WHOLE Type and image to communicate your book. Start there before messing with the image and image ideas.
Think of it that way.
That occurred to me today when I got pissed off at Barnes and Nobles... I thought their customer service kinda stunk today. And then I realized I was obsessing over it because it's user experience (My main obsession with design). And then I realized user experience extends to all kinds of design. User experience makes the design function. You can have the prettiest design in the world, but if it doesn't communicate, it's pretty dead. (Thank you Steve Jobs--though he wouldn't mince words and say something like, "It's a piece of S***"--I find his biography inspiring on design aspects for some reason...).
Usually for me, it's a no duh moment, but then I realized that not everyone here has that moment, though they may now automatically have it for stories (eventually)
^^; I hope this doesn't usurp anything though... not meant to.
Commercial art COMMUNICATES something. Even with all these tips and guidelines to creating art, what is the central rule to all of it, is that if the design fails to communicate, you've failed.
More than the rules about color, negative space, positive space, foreground, background, middle ground, etc. Your first job is the communicate to your audience what your book is about on your cover. if a piece of art can say 1,000 words, what do you want those 1,000 words to say to the reader about to buy your book?
I say this, because I, too, didn't get it. But after I took design classes, and took art classes, my drawings started to tell their own internal stories of sorts. A cover can tell the story for you, without giving away the ending, without using physical words. And that's kinda the art of graphic design.
When do you break a guideline? When it serves to communicate your message better.
For a cover, I would look for the following:
1. What is the genre? Can I tell from the cover?
2. What is the tone of the story?
3. Are there themes or elements from the story that give a nuance to the *other* things without re-enforcing them?
I always start here though some of my clients don't like it. (Since I do websites, they are more going on about the bells and whistles, and I'm trying to get them to concretely tell me what they want the website to function to *do* for the *client* first.)
Genre: Mystery
Setting: Thailand.
Themes: hardboiled, noir, gritty. Riverboats.
Tone: Sarcastic. Maybe with a little Irony.
The obvious on the nose choice would be to go for the open air market in Thailand. Go for some slangy Thai-ish font, slap it on the background like the MV Dirty put in a dead body and call it a day.
But like with stories, you want it to tell a story. YOUR story. And don't give people easy.
If your blurb reads, "On the backstreets of Thailand, there is a new boss in town." Then maybe you've got the wrong image.
What are you trying to say with this cover besides murder in Thailand? What does your story eventually say to the reader?
Some of the best covers I've seen are where I read the story and the cover gradually makes more and more sense as I look at it over and over again. The cover didn't give away the ending at all, but little details come out that make me appreciate the art on the front more. It becomes less of a marketing tool, but kind of joins with the book as one entity and you don't know it, but when you do finish, that's what you find. Just like subtle is good in stories, so it is with covers.
I have to say, I'm a huge fan of Michael Whelan covers. Because I'd often glance at the cover during the course of the story and then little details he'd put in make sense suddenly. (He says he reads the books before making covers, which make his art richer as a marketing tool)
You, who know the book the best should know what it's trying to communicate in the art. Put that as your first directive, and no matter what rules you break, you will probably end up breaking them well if you break them for that reason.
Nanowrimo had a book cover contest. And one of the graphic artists chose a book about a kid with OCD. It broke every rule about typography very subtly, slamming me with errors, but it *worked* because it communicated to me the meaning of the book through those type of errors--the type of thing that would drive someone with OCD mad.
The design works as a WHOLE Type and image to communicate your book. Start there before messing with the image and image ideas.
Think of it that way.
That occurred to me today when I got pissed off at Barnes and Nobles... I thought their customer service kinda stunk today. And then I realized I was obsessing over it because it's user experience (My main obsession with design). And then I realized user experience extends to all kinds of design. User experience makes the design function. You can have the prettiest design in the world, but if it doesn't communicate, it's pretty dead. (Thank you Steve Jobs--though he wouldn't mince words and say something like, "It's a piece of S***"--I find his biography inspiring on design aspects for some reason...).
Usually for me, it's a no duh moment, but then I realized that not everyone here has that moment, though they may now automatically have it for stories (eventually)
^^; I hope this doesn't usurp anything though... not meant to.