~ Lesson 4 ~
Fast & Easy Digital Design with Canva
Lesson 4 Goal: Discuss basic cover design principles and guidelines. Discuss process of creating a print book cover for Create Space using Canva.
Intro
- First let me say that I’m not going to tell you there are rules about design that must be followed.
- Second let me say that cover design, like all design, is a highly subjective art.
- Thirdly, in designing your ebook cover, you should decide what your most important message or goal is.
- Branding your author name?
- Standing out among your competitors?
- Uniformity within a series?
- Evoking emotion?
- Selling the title?
You get the idea. This will help guide your cover design.
About creating a print book cover using Canva: Caveat
I did successfully design two book covers using Canva and got the print proofs back to prove it! They are pictured below. The caveat is that Create Space recommends a 300 dpi resolution for the cover pdf and Canva a less than 100dpi resolution pdf for print. I proceeded with my experiment in spite of this knowledge and the results are here for you to take a look.
I can tell you that “in person” the covers look good to me—even with my glasses on. The background pics aren’t blurry (except by design) or pixelated and the text is crisp and legible. Could they be better with a higher resolution pdf? Probably, but unless you held up a 300dpi version next to mine, I personally don’t think it matters. I am satisfied with the outcome. You should judge for yourself:
Ebook Cover Design: Things to Consider (according to a thoughtful non-expert)
- Like everyone says—and you’ve observed for yourself—your ebook cover has to be judged in thumbnail size as a reader browsing their favorite online book store would do.
- You should consider your most important goal, or all your goals, when designing your cover.
- This means, consider your name and branding theme using colors, fonts and possibly logo if branding is important to you.
- Consider variations and similarities when designing a cover for a series.
- Consider genre conventions and what other bestselling book covers in your area look like. It’s good preparation or homework to check out other covers at your favorite online book store.
- This is worth expanding on. Even if you do not want to *copy* or create a conventional cover similar to others, it’s worth knowing what other covers are like, spotting trends and noting expectations—those elements that most covers have in common.
- It also might be helpful to get to the bottom of the heap—to those books that don’t sell—to see what those covers look like. Try to spot what looks ineffective to you and what the ineffective covers have in common, if possible.
- Consider Text Font carefully in relation to what you most want to get across with your cover. This is important especially when choosing the title’s font v. your name’s font and the color and size. It’s also important for unifying a series and/or distinguishing between series.
- Basic font distinction: Serif and Sans Serif: means respectively twigly edges on the font (like this one) and non twigly edges.
These days, the sans serif font types are in vogue.
This is all so complicated! How do you know what series you’ll do in the future and how the covers might be different? This is why many authors re-do the covers for whole series at a time down the road after the series has been out!
- Some background information from experts (not me) to consider when designing:
- People are naturally drawn to, or compelled by human faces
- Covers with water on them statistically better than other covers
- Colors set moods: i.e. dark for horror or thriller; red or pink for romance, etc.
- Note: there are many resources about color and marketing although none that I found were specifically about book covers. In fact, I’ve heard conflicting information from *experts* on the *best* color for a book cover. So, you’ll have to use your judgment on this.
- The eye naturally goes from left to right and top to bottom
- Make your name as big as possible (this was the one common advice given across the board by best selling authors and cover designers
- Use readable font types over fancy font types (I ignore this advice regularly. Oh well. I do it in the name of branding.)
- Beta test your cover designs with potential readers if possible
This is the wisdom I have to share about cover design. It’s not a science. It’s an art and many of you have probably learned a thing or two while you’ve been doing some designing on Canva.
Please share your observations. And as always, please ask your questions!
BONUS LESSON! Creating a Print Cover for Create Space using Canva
NOTE: I am not including a video tutorial for this lesson due to recent technical difficulties with my upper respiratory functioning—I have a cold.
As you’ve seen in the process of playing with Canva, there is no print book template to click on and create a cover. No quick & easy template is available.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s not possible! I have proven otherwise.
The reason Canva can’t have a pre-made template for this is because the sizing varies, not only depending on which size print book you’ll be creating—either 5×8 or 6×9 or others—but it also varies by the number of pages and the size of that pesky spine.
To create a print cover using Canva, you will need to use the “Use custom dimensions” tab on the far right top corner of the Create a Design page in Canva.
Here’s the screen you’ll see if you haven’t already tried it:
For my print book, The Beachcombers, I calculated the spine width using the instructions on Create Space (here) and the number of pages in my book and added the suggested .5 inch margin. I also changed the units from pixels to inches.
Then I had my custom sized template for my cover. The rest is choosing the background, front and back cover—and the spine.
Here’s how you manage the text on the spine:
The rotation guide will let you know when you get to 90 degrees.
After you add the background, front & back, you get something like this:
Be sure to read the Create Space Instructions thoroughly. They remind you to leave space for the ISBN bar code, etc. It took me many trials to get to this final version. I experimented with background color and text size, etc. and made lots of adjustments.
You will download this as a pdf for print
NOTE: Even after carefully following instructions, after I uploaded my new print cover to create space and they ran it through their review, they found problems.
The biggest problem was the low dpi or resolution and I was concerned about this. However, evidently I made mistakes in my calculations for the template size and print size for the spine. But no worries! Create Space adjusted my cover size, my spine size and even the text size on the spine to make it all right!
I thought this was terribly kind of them.
So, no need to worry about exactitude in your template measurements! If you come close in your calculations, you should be okay!
Final Word
I enjoy designing and using Canva. I get to exercise my creative streak and it’s a fun break from writing. If you’re like me, then you’ll be an *expert* in no time and from what I’ve seen—you’re already doing well with producing fabulous social media graphics and ebook covers!
But of course, some of you may not find it so much fun—that’s okay. Use it when you need it because it’s handy and you know how. Then find someone else—like me and many others—to help with the rest.
I hope you learned something from your Lessons on Fast & Easy Design with Canva!