Book Cover Design (Part 2)

Explanation of Design Choice:

The cover I ended up creating was from the first design.  I really like the idea simplicity being used and to create a feeling of a far away landscape so you can feel the miles of walking that Bilbo Baggins would find so daunting at first.  I decided to put Smaug the dragon as the main focus.  Smaug is extremely important character to the plot because the adventure is based on Smaug stealing the treasure from the dwarves.  Also, I wanted to achieve with the coloration of the cover that this was an old tale from long ago.

I started by finding all my images: The movie hobbit logo, the lonely mountain, the coffee-stained paper, the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Logo and the Scan Code.  The logo and lonely mountain images were used as a reference for the hand drawn sketches I created.  I also used the Gestalt Principle by continuing round mountain effects from the front to the back of the cover.  Using this principle helped me achieve the simplicity of round black strokes but then the eye perceives as mountains continuing into the distance over great space.  Next, I scan in the images I had drawn.   The links are listed below for the images I had used.

Photoshop Methods:

Next, I used a red outline to frame out the book cover, book back and spine while working on the design.  This red outline was very helpful while designing but then could take off the outline for the final presentation.

I realized that the back I used for the drawing was matching to much with the text so I looked through the blending modes until I found one that look the best. The blending mode that looks the best was overlay and it made the black look orange over the background.

While setting up the description I realized the font Romana was very hard to see so I ended up used the font Aesthet Nova instead. To do this I used an adobe font from the Adobe website:  https://fonts.adobe.com/

·       First you need to sign into Adobe

·       Next you click add family of the font style that you would like to add

·       You can now open Adobe App

·       Next the new Adobe Font Family will appear on your creative cloud

·       Finally, you need to select the family and download from the creative cloud

Once I added the Description, I added The Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the Scan Code logos.

I also labeled each different layer so if I need to change anything then I can easily find which layer I need. 

For instance, my layers are labeled: 

·       Background Brown

·       Mountains

·       Front Cover – Hobbit Logo

·       Front Cover – Author

·       Spine – Hobbit Logo

·       Spine – Author

·       Spine – Publisher logo

·       Back Cover – Barcode

·       Back Cover – Publisher logo

·       Back Cover – Description

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cite:

Adobe Fonts. (n.d.). Adobe Fonts. https://fonts.adobe.com/

Soulaaahd. (n.d.). Is this an original Tolkien drawing of Smaug and the Lonely Mountain? : r/TheHobbit. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheHobbit/comments/avmkqq/is_this_an_original_tolkien_drawing_of_smaug_and/

Tea-stained Paper 4 by MapleRose-Stock on DeviantArt. (2010, July 20). DeviantArt. https://www.deviantart.com/maplerose-stock/art/Tea-stained-Paper-4-172001395