Creating one picture story – a step-by-step example
One picture stories are extremely easy to create. Just shoot a picture and type your story using TypeDrawing application. This post is to share with you some tips on how to achieve a more advanced look. If you know what you want, it’ll take no more than 20 minutes.
When you have an iPhone 3G the pictures are, to be polite, average. This one was shot at the Spectrum Museum in Berlin. I knew I had to deeply rework it. »»»
Create your own one picture stories
If you own an iPhone and want to share with the world more than just pictures, try this: one picture stories.
They’re extremely easy to create – and fun to do. What you need is one great application from the AppStore – Type Drawing. The app is definitely worth its price – 1,99 USD/1,59 EUR (download link here). The program lets you literally paint with words. The recent update has an enhanced, intuitive interface; a choice of 22 fonts, ability to zoom, eyedropper and many other features.
What’s most important – as a background you can use pictures from your iPhone’s photo library.
How to create one picture story?
1. Pick up a photo.
2. Open it in Type Drawing.
3. Write/paint your text. Do it the way you want, it’s all up to your imagination. A useful tip here is that if you don’t want a text to be painted in a loop just enter several spaces at the end in a text input box.
4. Save picture to photo library.
5. Share with the world. If you use a tag #1picstory it’ll be easier found in the Twitterverse. »»»
New cover of Hashtagstories Vol.1 – what do you think?
As I’ve almost finished a second set of hashtagstories, I decided to change a cover. There was something I didn’t like about the original one. It was pure, simple – and didn’t show how versatile can be the world of Twitter hashtags. And yes, I wanted to make it dirty.
For those who want to know, what the hash is this #hashtagstory about, please read the kick off post. The book can be downloaded from here.
Please have a look. Compare to the original one. What do you think?
E-book covers inspired by the design of mobile applications
I’m a mobile freak and here you have another prove of it. These are the brand new covers, I’ve designed with a help of my Twitter friends for two volumes of my short stories, which will be available in a couple of weeks through Smashwords/Barnes&Noble. In the meantime you can download a free edition here. I describe the stories as tech-absurd. The bot-behaving gadget-eating error-ready part of you will understand, what I mean.
The brief I issued to myself was simple: get an attention of geeks with a message: “technology is wonderful, but…” (oh, and check the bottom bar for options).
15 free covers for Twitter fiction books
If you are considering to publish a book of your literary tweets, the only thing which stops you might be a lack of a cover. Problem solved. You can pick up your favourite one from below. They all are for free. I’ve designed them to help self-publishers like myself. What I’m only asking for is to download my free book, leave a review and spread the word.
Series 1
Series 2
Series 3
Series 4
Series 5
“Twitter Fiction Book Cover” by Nick Name is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share alike 3.0 Unported License.
How to turn Wordle into an e-book cover generator
Wordle is a fantastic word cloud generator. Its creator, Jonathan Feinberg, has managed to do one great thing: with the selection of fonts, colors and a whole idea how the words are composed, the effect is far beyond the IT world. It already belongs to the world of art.
With Wordle it’s all fun. You enter URL address (f.e. of your blog) and get the cloud of most popular words used. You can also paste a text – and this is actually a possibility Wordle is giving to self-publishing authors. When a writer wants to publish an e-book, with a destination places like Feedbooks, Smashwords, Scribd and alikes, the prepress knowledge is not needed any more. In fact, in most cases the only missing part is just a jpeg picture with a catchy cover. And it doesn’t need to be hi-res CMYK file. One screenshot is enough.
Below there are some tips and examples of how to create it. »»»
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: »»»
Please stop complaining about e-book design
There is a lot of complaining about how badly electronic books are designed. It’s true that 90% of e-book designs are crap. Most designers can tell you that. Probably exactly the same thing they say about paper books. The only difference is that in case of p-books they sometimes spot and share a good stuff.
When we talk about e-books the one single design association is a mix of white background, smiling photostock figure and a huge “how-to” title. Does that mean, that well designed e-books don’t exist? And this is what really bothers me: recognized, experienced book designers either ignore e-books or reject them.
Please stop it. Open your imagination to e-books. There is a lot to be done. 90% of designs are waiting to be improved. This would be much better, if we all start to find and share great, inspiring examples of e-book design. »»»
Recently updated Polish tech-absurdist and mobile fiction writer 3.0 beta. Addicted to ebooks and technology. Guest writer at 
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