For this exercise, I was asked to design two different covers for a book I am familiar with – one using photographs or illustrations, and one using only typography. I had to design the entire cover including the spine and reverse, and I was asked to critique my work once completed.
I recently finished reading A Class Act by Rob Beckett, so I decided to use that as it was so fresh in my mind. I dissected the brief for the exercise in my sketchbook, identifying what each of the two covers needed, what information I had to include in my design, and what action points to follow. I started by identifying themes from the book that I felt I wanted to represent through my design to inform the reader of what they are buying.
Rob Beckett is a British comedian who was raised in south-east London. A Class Act is his autobiographical assessment of the class divide, and how it became extremely apparent to him as he began mixing with others in the comedy industry, rubbing shoulders with celebrities, marrying an upper-class woman, and having kids of his own. He explores his own relationship with class, what he has noticed since becoming more middle class, and how this continues to impact his mental health to this day. It manages to be a very funny book whilst touching on some really deep and difficult topics. As a working-class person myself, it was very relatable.
I knew I wanted to keep the designs light, funny, and obviously autobiographical, as well as trying to communicate the class divide that’s discussed within the book. Before exploring my own ideas, though, I wanted to collect as many books by other comedians as possible to give me a good idea of the trends and patterns used throughout. I searched through Amazon’s comedy and autobiographical sections to collate a wide range of inspiration. I noticed some very clear and interesting trends throughout, such as portraits of the comedian being front and centre on almost all of the covers.
Initial research collected for this exercise, and the original cover for the book I chose.
The colours used across the covers were very similar too, with a lot of white and blue showing up, and a few instances of orange or red. The covers were mostly minimalistic, with the images of the author and the author’s name dominating the page. The author’s name was, in most cases, given more visual priority than the title of the book. It’s likely that this is due to the autobiographical nature of the books; whoever has written it takes priority over what it is called. The typefaces used were relatively simple, with mostly sans serif used, although some serif was used too. There were a lot of instances of handwritten or script fonts throughout, likely because this gives a ‘personal’ feel to the page as if the author has directly written on the book themselves.
I wanted to start with my photographic cover as I felt this would be a lot easier to accomplish for this book. I was already a bit concerned about how I would approach the type-only cover as this was very uncommon in the genre, so I felt that beginning with a familiar style would be a good place to start. Before I began thumbnailing, I wanted to collect imagery that I planned to use on the cover, so I knew what I was working with. I grabbed a bunch of photographs of Rob Beckett in various contexts from Google Images and thought about the various contexts I could use them in. Some shared background colours or were from the same shoot, and so they were easier to pair up. Others took a little more thinking, and further research to find images that fit.
I then sketched out various options for the front cover. My favourite images were the one of Rob sitting on a chair in a suit in front of a red velvet curtain, and the photo of him in front of an orange background – which paired nicely with another from the same shoot of him on a children’s bike. I liked how the seated image gave an air of luxury and higher class, but that he still looked a bit lost in that position. My favourite initial concepts were one utilising balloons as text, and one with a comically giant martini glass with the text inside. I very roughly mocked these up in Photoshop to make a digital sketch. I did this to see how I felt about the composition of each and what work would be involved to create the design.
I really liked the imagery of Rob sitting on the chair in front of the curtain, almost cowering from a giant imposing martini glass. However, I felt it would be way too much work to try to get this piece to look polished. I also wasn’t super confident about the other image choices to use for the back cover, whereas the orange portrait had a great existing image for the back cover. Having to work with images found online, rather than being able to request a photoshoot with the author, was hard. I also thought the original cover was really, really good. I felt a bit like nothing I could personally come up with would compare to how fantastic this cover is – it’s a really admirable piece of design work.
Next, I found the typical size of a paperback book in the UK and created a canvas of that size in InDesign. For the rest of the design process, I switched back and forth between Photoshop and InDesign to create various assets and then lay them out in an organised way. This was enormously stressful, and I really do not enjoy having to use two different pieces of software in this way. InDesign is fantastic for layouts, but having to go back into Photoshop to edit images repeatedly rather than being able to do this within InDesign itself is so frustrating! I am very used to having everything in one place.
In Photoshop, I followed a guide found on youtube to create a smart object for balloon text. This was a fantastic tutorial and it was really eye-opening to how different effects in Photoshop can work together to create such realistic-looking assets. I furthered this process by changing some of the effects to look more in line with my goal, rather than this very generic and digital balloon-like appearance. I used the typeface Grenadine for the balloon text as it felt playful and childlike, which aided the balloons’ impact. I made a bunch of different colour options for the cover and then moved back to InDesign to fit the text to the image.
I used a simple 3×3 grid as I remembered reading that the intersection of these points is where the eye is naturally drawn. Because of that, I tried to ensure important aspects of the design met these intersections. I placed the image of Rob in the centre of the page and added the balloon text. I then went back into Photoshop and created simple balloons with A, C, and T written on them using Sketchnote, which I added to the main image. For the author’s name, I used a variant of the Sketchnote type family as I felt it tied in with the existing usage, and it worked really well with the rest of the page.
I finally added a soft gradient to the whole image to tie in the existing shadows in the portrait. The balloons felt a bit weird just ‘hanging’ there in midair, so I spent quite a while trying to make some ‘strings’. This is where my limitations – not having access to Rob himself to do a literal photoshoot, and having to switch back and forth between software – became a huge issue. Relying on photos that were already available meant that I was limited by the resources I could use, and switching software made creating the design more complicated. In the end, I opted for the midair suspension and added a review from BM Mag which I found online.
I felt really confident about the front cover overall, so I moved on to the spine and back cover. For the spine, I used the same type family, with identical author lettering, and the same font as on the silver balloons for the title of the book. I also added the publisher’s logo and a border to help the spine feel more complete and centred. On the back cover, I added the picture of Rob on the children’s bike, then added a blurb around him. I’m really pleased with how this turned out, and I feel like the whole jacket flows together seamlessly.
I found a book mock-up that displayed the front and back of the cover and added the design. It was then that I realised I had accidentally created the design backwards, and that the front cover should be on the right-hand side of the page. This meant there was some misalignment in the spine imagery, but it isn’t super noticeable. This mockup also has a weird amount of exposure applied to the image, so it’s slightly washed out. I still like seeing the cover in context, and it makes me feel super happy about how it turned out.
For the typography-only cover, I initially wanted to follow a very minimalistic design inspired by one of my thumbnails for the photographic cover. I decided to explore further, just to be sure there wasn’t more I could do, and came up with the idea of engravings on marble with graffiti’d text scrawled over it. I began by setting up my grid and guidelines, ensuring this time to create the front of the cover on the right-hand side. I followed another guide on how to create a text engraving effect in InDesign itself so I didn’t have to keep switching back to Photoshop this time. I played around with this until I felt it looked more like an expensive upper-class carving.
This process was really difficult, as I think it just doesn’t look as good on a screen as it would when printed. I would imagine using a metallic gold colour embossed on the actual cover would look fantastic. It’s very flat on the screen in comparison and it feels a bit crap. I used Sketchnote again for the graffiti effect, which I think could probably be done more effectively. I used Los Feliz for the author’s name, which I had also used in the photographic piece. This time, I changed the author’s name and tagline to a deep brown shade to help create some hierarchy in the piece.
The spine was designed in a very similar way to the first cover, utilising the assets I had already created. On the reverse, I added more graffiti and intended to create the same engraving effect for the first line of the text. I couldn’t remember exactly how I had managed to create the effect on the front cover however, and I felt quite demotivated by this design. I left it as it was and hoped it communicated my intentions well enough.
I thought the concept behind this design was really fun and fitting for the book, but overall it just fell a bit flat. I’m sure there are ways I could improve it that I just can’t see right now, but I also think that ultimately for a book like this, a text-only design is always going to be hard and may be a bad fit. Had I gone with the minimalistic cover option, it would probably look a lot more visually appealing. It seems sort of cluttered and chaotic right now. I found it difficult to choose colours in this context, and as mentioned earlier, I think it would look a lot better printed compared to on-screen.
When I put the image onto my mockup, my opinion of it changed. This brought it to life in more ways than one, as this embossed effect I was going for kinda looked more realistic and effective! I feel more confident in the design seeing it in this context, but I still think the photographic design is more suited to the genre.
I really enjoyed this whole exercise, even if I don’t feel like both covers were a success. I think that making two very different covers taught me a lot about how to fit design to a certain genre or brief. I have found designing for books very enjoyable so far and I regret not choosing Creative Book Design as my third unit for level one. I think I would have had a much more enjoyable time than I did on Illustration Sketchbooks. I hope I have more opportunities to explore book design as I progress through my degree.
Learning Log 