Photography has always been a hobby of mine growing up. However, I’ve noticed how easy it is for one to fumble into the umbrella of being ‘just another person with an expensive camera.’ I began searching online for unique designers who took their photos to the next level. They managed to turn a simple image of a person into a layout style showing their entire personality, and I was obsessed! I signed up for graphic design classes in high school and got to work. My teachers helped me enter into award shows as I continued to grow an appreciation for graphic designers. Anyone can point a camera and press a button, but not many people are willing to take their images to the next level. Both book jacket design and publication design are perfect ways to incorporate images, and allow you to add your own twist. They are a great gateway into helping both a graphic designer and their client make a statement.
Book Jacket Design
Learning to fall in love with reading was one of the hardest things for me to do. I spent years holding books but not taking the time to grasp the words on a page. The only way I would pull a book from the shelf was if it stood out from the ones around it. My favorite part about book jacket design is that you’re able to create something that can stand out and be completely unique from others. A goal I would have if I were to take on this type of design would be to create something that would make readers want to carry this book around and show it off, rather than just toss it into a bag. With my personality I don’t like being a basic, average person. I feel like books are very similar in that sense, all of them should stand out. Covers are a gateway opportunity to make new connections and have different parts of the book to stand out.
I found a website that goes over some of the main portions in book jacket design called, Anatomy of a Book Cover. They use many different kinds of examples as they go through all the necessities and is a good resource in helping one get started. The British Cover Design, shares many amazing covers. I highly recommend checking this out if you’re in need of some inspiration. It shows hundreds of different books covers from over the years, and you’re even able to go through and look at all the winners. Some are very simple, yet they have a sort of twist to them that makes you intrigued. Others have bold colors that catch your eye quickly. I love how unique each book is, and all the different ways you can play around when designing. Below I added some examples of my favorite styles for book design.
Publication Design
My favorite thing about publication design is how much you’re able to represent so many different things. No one is going to read any form of newspaper, magazine, or website, that is just your standard size 12 font and only paragraphs upon paragraphs. Everything will look a thousand times better if you add in a color scheme and some fun fonts to go with it. With my personality and life-style, it’s pretty much impossible for me to only be one ‘aesthetic.’ Part of me lives at the beach 24/7, and another side of me would love to sit inside at a library all day and just read, but I also can’t wait for the day that I become a nurse and work at a job that can be very fast paste. I’m the exact same way with design, sometimes I enjoy trying to work in every last detail, and others I can look at it and say less is more. The nice part about publication design is that you’re able to use both styles for different situations.
In the past year, publication design has been very important with everything. This pandemic has brought a lot of negativity and hardship among everyone. Almost every person was stuck at home and online. This website I found, called Graphic Mama shows some of the graphic design trends that arose in 2020. One of the things I noticed was how so many of them have lots of brightening colors. I find a lot of these to be very fun, uplifting, and I think it’s exactly what we all needed as were we on lockdowns. The Society of Publication Designers has many great examples of publication design. If you take a look at their page, they share a large variety of work created for well known companies. I really enjoy how in some of their examples, the designers were able to take a regular image to the next level, making their design really stand out. I added some more examples of my favorite styles with publication design below.
