Book Cover Design (in less than two minutes!)

I know, I know. We've all heard it before: don't judge a book by its cover. But realistically, we all do it. Don't you ever see a spectacular cover design and think you just have to have that book for your shelf? And if we don't judge our books by their covers, why do design teams spend so long working and re-working them, and why is the debate of what e-book "covers" will look like so heated?

Given this, I will continue with the assumption that, like it or not, we all judge books by their covers. With this in mind, what goes in to the making of a good book cover? Luckily, Lauren Panepinto, creative designer for Orbit books, has all of those outside of a publisher's design team a glimpse into this fascinating process:



The covers for this series are certainly eye-catching:



What I find even more interesting than the final covers, though, are those that didn't make it onto the jacket. I know in my company, we often go through 3 or 4 main concepts before a book before settling on a final version to be tweaked and edited as necessary... but I can't give everything away here. If you'd like to see the original design concept, read more from the designer and get even more insight into book design, visit the original posting of this material at the Design: Related blog. Trust me, if you had the two minutes to give to the video above, it will be worth a few more to read the whole article!