What Goes Into A Book’s Design?

Imagine it: Going into a bookstore and seeing a cover that immediately grabs your attention. And after picking it up to skim the summary, it slowly starts to feel like the beginning of an exciting new read. But if you just can’t wait until getting to the register to pore through the first few pages, you might get hooked in before you know it.

Crafting a striking look that jumps off a shelf is exactly what book designers do. They understand that a book’s cover should compliment the interior content and attract potential readers. It takes great care and a lot of skill. Let’s dive into some of the steps designers take to create a beautiful book and look at the key considerations and components that bring it all together.

Key Considerations

Designers are responsible for creating a strong visual package that captures your attention while organizing information in a cohesive manner. And when starting a new book project, they have quite a few things to think about. Along with conducting research and preparing several type and layout concepts, designers may also need to partner with illustrators to provide art direction or manipulate stock photos, depending on their area of expertise and the book’s format and genre.

Format

Most book projects start with a design brief that lists key info for the designer to consider, like the format and genre. In most cases, the format can also dictate the age group, trim size, and the type of designer(s) needed for the project.

For example: Picture books or board books for early readers usually require a creative that specializes in designing for a younger audience and working with artists. While hardcover or paperback books for older readers may require two types of designers: a cover designer and a typesetter for the interior.

Genre

A book’s genre informs the designer of the tone and feel they need to create for the target audience. Considerations can also be made for the creative approach.

For example: Based on current trends, majority of today’s fiction young adult (YA) books will feature an illustrated cover. While nonfiction genres like, biographies, cookbooks, history and self-help will more commonly feature photography and/or type-dominant covers.

Comps

Comparable (or competitive) titles can provide inspiration for directional approaches, layouts, color and other design aspects that can be considered and tested for the final look.

Within the brief, authors may supply several comp titles that have similar themes, content and readership to their book. Comps can also help with pitches and provide a benchmark for sales expectations based on how well those published titles performed in the market.

Components

A book’s cover is the most prominent part of the whole package, but designers also need to expand the look they’ve developed to work for the spine and back cover (and in some cases, the interior). Then based on the format, a full jacket wrap, case wrap and endpapers may need to be illustrated and designed as well.

Cover

The cover design process will most likely start with research that may include any comp titles provided. And depending on the genre noted in the brief, designers can already have an idea of which creative direction may work best (illustrated, photographic, type-dominant, etc).

The process then moves onto sketches, showing rough concepts that explore layout and type options, plus design directions. After feedback and discussion, sketches then evolve into more comprehensive layouts (or design comps) to show more detailed renderings for what the final direction, colors and typography could look like. Following one last round of reviews, the approved cover direction can then be finalized with any additional finishing touches.

Between the sketch and finishing stages, designers may be asked to produce several rounds of revisions before a final design is approved.

Backcover

For standard paperback and paper-over-board (POB) formats, the back cover holds a good deal of information. Using the fonts, colors, and any additional design elements from the cover, designers lay out and organize several key pieces of content on the back cover, including the book’s summary, an author bio, reviews, the publisher’s name, any relevant copyright or cover credit info, the barcode and the price. The author bio will also customarily sit on the last page of the interior if space on the back cover is limited.

Spine

Although it may not seem like it, the spine is a very important part of a book’s design. Since it faces out on bookshelves, in most cases, it’ll be the first thing a potential reader sees. Therefore, the eye-catching concept from the cover needs to be carried over to the spine’s design while ensuring the content will be legible in such a slim space. It also quickly tells readers the book’s title, the author’s name and the publisher.

Jacket

Jacketed hardcover books pull art and design elements from the cover, similarly to paperbacks. But with the addition of flaps, there’s a lot more room for content and creativity. A full jacket wrap is comprised of the front cover, back cover, spine and the front and back flaps. The flaps will hold information that’s usually reserved for the back cover on paperbacks, which leaves a lot more space for any artwork or photos to shine alongside a tagline or reviews.

Interior

Designers can chose to use elements and fonts from the cover or jacket for parts of the interior like the title page, chapter openers and page breaks.

For more design-heavy books that involve lots of artwork or photos, like nonfiction titles, building unique and separate design templates for various sections is a huge part of the process. In addition to the overall layout, keen attention is paid to the pagination, margins, spacing and best fonts for legibility to craft a great and comfortable reading experience.

Case Cover and Endpapers

Most commonly customized for children’s books, a case cover and endpapers can be designed and/or illustrated as well. The case cover can mirror the front and back covers of the jacket or display a completely different design/illustration.

After all the necessary considerations are made and components are pieced together, we’ll have ourselves a newly designed masterpiece! These points give just a quick overview of the steps designers take to bring their stunning covers and interiors to life. For more insights, take a look at The Book Design Process portion of the website and check out the Design section of our Resources page as well.