Possibilities of e-book cover design [example]
Look at the example of a cover I recently made for my new book.
Book covers seen in Stanza Reader for iPhone
Referring to this post, I just started to collect ideas of what can be done to support e-book cover design, with “e-book” being the most important part. We should stop thinking of e-books as a second class, second step or a second chance. We should stop thinking of CMYK, Pantone colors and the shade of a paper. Let’s think of a cover design for an e-book in terms of where it’s gonna be exposed. And it will not appear on a bookshelf. The destination of an e-book cover is a screenshelf.
As soon as we change our perspective, some amazing ideas start to crowd into mind. This single example of a cover, designed to be an e-book cover and nothing else, is benefiting from two possibilities, which are not so easy to be achieved with p-book covers:
Bright colors :. Every designer will admit, that it’s not easy to keep bright colors when it comes to printing. “An intensive green?–You need a Pantone color for that.” Now think – you don’t have this problem any more. Use the most of RGB scale, you’re not gonna loose it.
Transparency :. When you download a file to a place where an e-book will be shown, you can keep the transparency if you use a .png format. Transparency has a tremendous potential and it can start a totally new way of looking at book covers at all. I remember how impressed I was, when I downloaded Adrian Graham’s book to Stanza and it had round corners! So imagine a cover which is not limited, like in case of p-books, to what can be cut out of paper. Use just letters for a cover, make it round, take an impressive drawing and show it without a background, se a couple of layers, each one with a different transparency. And lots more.
The time is high to change attitude, as at least two major things are going to shape new expectations towards e-book covers:
:. It’s only a question of time when new color E-Ink devices will arrive
:. Apple will soon enter an e-book world with at least one eReading device – and totally change the way we think of e-books. The look is gonna be very important, as always with Apple, this time the look of an e-book.
Mike Cane wrote a great post, comparing p- and e- covers of the same book. I agree – e-books are eToilet. But it’s gonna change and the innovation will come from those, who treat e-books like a first class, first step and a first chance.
PS.
Soon I’ll write a more detailed post on the possibilities of an e-book cover design.
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
Comments and Reactions: 6
Comments enhanced by BackType Connect reactions from Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, Reddit and Hacker News.
-
[...] link is being shared on Twitter right now. @nizejpodpisany, an influential author, said Blog: [...]
Polish tech-absurdist and mobile fiction writer 3.0 beta. Addicted to ebooks and technology. Guest writer at 
Loading ...
It's a fantastic time to be alive and creative, there are so many possibilities if we only stop looking to what was and instead embrace what we can do now and what might be possible tomorrow. That's why I moved over to the Gimp for artwork. I was continually told that if I wanted to produce anything worthwhile I'd have to keep using Photoshop. I hate it when people tell me I can't do something, so the book covers you so gratefully illustrated on your blog, were all accomplished using the Gimp and Inkscape along with stock images and some imagination. I have some new designs uploaded now to my own domain http://fictionmonster.com/gallery
Never heard of Gimp. Will try it. If only I could design so beautiful covers like yours:)
@namenick Text unclear, no point of interest, no colour synergy. Back to the designer for that one.
@merrileefaber what color synergy are you talking about?
@namenick No, I meant the lack of colour synergy. Lime green, white and grey?