Post by ajabbiati on Jun 14, 2011 7:46:37 GMT -5
Hey all,
Just a few general comments on the cover art posted so far. Take this for what it's worth...only one person's opinion.
Anywho, as someone with a little graphic design experience under his belt, and a lifetime of cover admiration, I can see some of the same pluses and minuses across most of these covers. Generally, the base artwork is excellent. I assume most of it is royalty free stuff, but in a nut shell it's on par with other professional covers. So...no problem there. However, the one thing that still makes most of these look a little less than professional is the text work. Professional covers nearly always have text that looks like it was specially laid out/painted/crafted by hand just for that cover. The "eye" can pick out text that's been laid out by a computer in a split second. The kerning, alignment, sizing, spacing...it's all proportional and perfect. This perfect layout of text, for most books, gives a cover a homegrown, Powerpoint kind of feel, and thus makes it seem less professional, as a perfect computer layout does not usually equate to a perfect title layout to the eye. I'd recommend a few things for text work. First, nearly always choose at least two fonts (or at least two different representations of the same font), one for the title and one for the author name. If you add a blurb to the cover, that's usually a different font as well. In all, though, I'd use no more than three. The title font should reflect, if it can, the feel of the genre or type of story at hand. That is, don't use a modernish-looking font for a fantasy novel. Second, lay out the text by creating separate text boxes for different parts of the title/author name text, and do something a little bit different for each part, if possible. Lots of ways to do this, even if it's simply breaking out an 's into its own text box and moving it closer to the main text, because the layout program spaces the 's proportionally, which, though correct from a computer layout perspective, makes it seem too stretched out to the naked eye. After breaking up the text and manipulating them into something more artistic, group the individual text boxes, and viola! A custom text layout...using standard fonts in your layout program.
Also, keep in mind composition. Most of these look great from that perspective, but it's something to note. If your interested in a bit more on that, I blogged about it a while back here: ajabbiati.com/?p=490
Hope that was clear and somewhat useful...
Keep up the good work!
--A. J. Abbiati
Just a few general comments on the cover art posted so far. Take this for what it's worth...only one person's opinion.
Anywho, as someone with a little graphic design experience under his belt, and a lifetime of cover admiration, I can see some of the same pluses and minuses across most of these covers. Generally, the base artwork is excellent. I assume most of it is royalty free stuff, but in a nut shell it's on par with other professional covers. So...no problem there. However, the one thing that still makes most of these look a little less than professional is the text work. Professional covers nearly always have text that looks like it was specially laid out/painted/crafted by hand just for that cover. The "eye" can pick out text that's been laid out by a computer in a split second. The kerning, alignment, sizing, spacing...it's all proportional and perfect. This perfect layout of text, for most books, gives a cover a homegrown, Powerpoint kind of feel, and thus makes it seem less professional, as a perfect computer layout does not usually equate to a perfect title layout to the eye. I'd recommend a few things for text work. First, nearly always choose at least two fonts (or at least two different representations of the same font), one for the title and one for the author name. If you add a blurb to the cover, that's usually a different font as well. In all, though, I'd use no more than three. The title font should reflect, if it can, the feel of the genre or type of story at hand. That is, don't use a modernish-looking font for a fantasy novel. Second, lay out the text by creating separate text boxes for different parts of the title/author name text, and do something a little bit different for each part, if possible. Lots of ways to do this, even if it's simply breaking out an 's into its own text box and moving it closer to the main text, because the layout program spaces the 's proportionally, which, though correct from a computer layout perspective, makes it seem too stretched out to the naked eye. After breaking up the text and manipulating them into something more artistic, group the individual text boxes, and viola! A custom text layout...using standard fonts in your layout program.
Also, keep in mind composition. Most of these look great from that perspective, but it's something to note. If your interested in a bit more on that, I blogged about it a while back here: ajabbiati.com/?p=490
Hope that was clear and somewhat useful...
Keep up the good work!
--A. J. Abbiati