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Tatiana Oliva Morales

Book cover design

Tutorial

Шрифты предоставлены компанией «ПараТайп»


Иллюстратор Tatiana Oliva Morales
Дизайнер обложки Tatiana Oliva Morales




© Tatiana Oliva Morales, 2020
© Tatiana Oliva Morales, иллюстрации, 2020
© Tatiana Oliva Morales, дизайн обложки, 2020




The tutorial consists of 2 parts. Part 1 sets forth a theory with detailed explanations of design principles, examples and exercises to work out various techniques. Part 2, the workshop, consists of 28 designs for processing and recreation. The manual is designed to study the principles of book cover design «from scratch». Partly the attention is paid to illustration. On the completion of this course, you will be able to make the design of any complexity and subject matter.




12+

Created by Ridero Intelligent Publishing System

Table of contents

Book cover design


Annotation


From the author


Introduction


Part 1. Theory and practice of cover design and illustrations


Lesson 1. How the graphical editor works (on the example of the Canva site)


Lesson 2. Uploading Images and Downloading Designs


Exercise 1


Exercise 2




Lesson 3. Resizing an image


Exercise 3


Exercise 4


Exercise 5


Exercise 6


Exercise 7




Lesson 4. Changing tone and color of the image, moving around the background


Exercise 8


Exercise 9




Lesson 5. Working with the background


Exercise 10


Exercise 11


Exercise 12




Lesson 6. Image synchronization


Exercise 13


Exercise 14




Lesson 7. Working with text


Exercise 15




Lesson 8. Rotating of the Elements


Exercise 16


Exercise 17


Exercise 18


Exercise 19




Lesson 9. How to make transparent background image


Exercise 20


Exercise 21




Lesson 10. Cover sizes


Lesson 11. How to place illustrations in the text of the book


Lesson 12. Cover Design


Exercise 22


Exercise 23




Lesson 13. Where to look for the material for covers and illustrations, and how to use it


Lesson 14. Lego Сonstructor Technique


Exercise 24


Exercise 25


Exercise 26


Exercise 27


Exercise 28


Exercise 29


Exercise 30


Exercise 31


Exercise 32


Exercise 33




Lesson 15. What the cover should not be




Part 2. Workshop


Task

Annotation

The tutorial consists of 2 parts. The first part sets forth a theory with detailed explanations of design principles, examples and exercises to study various techniques.

The second part, the workshop, consists of 28 designs for processing and recreating. The manual is designed to study the principles of book cover design «from scratch». Partly the attention is paid to illustration.

After completing the full course of this tutorial, you will be able to make any design you are interested in: the cover of a children’s book, a collection of poems, fiction, educational and other literature.

From the author

This tutorial can be used as a self-learning manual. If you need additional consultations or classes, you may contact me. Consultations / classes in person and via Skype are possible.

Individual orders for cover design and book illustration are accepted.

My contact details
Tel 8 925 184 37 07
Skype: oliva-morales
E-mail: oliva-morales@mail.ru

Website:
https://lronline.ru

Respectfully,
Tatiana Oliva Morales

Introduction

It so happened that I became a writer. I write different things — textbooks, prose, sometimes poetry, and, of course, books for children. And, as you know, this is a special kind of literature that requires high-quality content, including a bright and beautiful cover, as well as illustrations.

While I was writing only textbooks, I did not think about any special cover design. Sure, it was important for me. I wanted the cover to be attractive, recognizable, especially since, as a rule, I never write one single textbook, but do them in series.

So, when I realized that I had accumulated material in my computer from which I could get about a hundred educational children’s books, the issue of their covers design and illustrations came up very sharply.

I did not want to entrust both of those processes to anyone else. I perfectly understood that no one except me knew and felt the content of those books better, and therefore he would not complete the design of the covers and illustrations the way I could make.

Despite the fact that I have an art education, and I still draw when I find inspiration, I do it exclusively on canvas or an album sheet — I don’t know how to draw on a computer.

Therefore, I was faced with the task of either learning how to draw on a computer or understanding how the designers work in graphic editors.

I began to google, and after some time I googled the information about the graphic editor on the Canva website. The reviews about it were not bad, so I registered there and began to study the program. It took several days, but my work was not in vain.

After some time, I realized that working on Canva is about as easy as using a Word text editor. Very quickly I filled my hand. I began to make covers and illustrations. Although, of course, each cover was made painstakingly, since I am extremely responsible for the process of its creation, and every detail is important to me.

So on Canva it turned out that you didn’t need to be able to draw on a computer in order to create covers and illustrations, although the art education was very useful to me there.

But I can tell you exactly that you can completely do without having such an education, if you have a taste, a sense of harmony of colors and composition.

Part 1. Theory and practice of cover design and illustrations

Lesson 1. How the graphical editor works (on the example of the Canva site)

In the graphics editor you have a blank white page in front of you. You can set its size (it changes in pixels, millimeters, centimeters and inches). Here you can also select elements for composition from the Canva data bank. It looks like this.

The background color (of the same white page) can also be changed in different ways. You can use the color palette (it is at the top left), you can select a background from the Canva data bank (the window on the left, Background tab) or load your own one (the window on the left, Download tab).

You can work on Canva for free, but then the possibilities will be pretty limited, and you can pay a fee for a month (or for a longer period of time, see Tariff plans), then you will have all the tools to create interesting designs. The monthly maintenance costs about 10 US dollars.

As for the elements that you need to place on the cover — they all change in size, move and rotate, if necessary. Some of them can change color.

All this can be made with the mouse cursor — hold the object with the left mouse button and then move it wherever you want. Using the same cursor, you can change the size of the object. If a color change is available for an object, you will see a palette on the top panel when you click on this object.

The complete picture of how this graphic editor works can be obtained by watching video tutorials at this link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL-WbHwsbs8

Although personally I chose to go to the rest myself.

Therefore, I further propose to consider the basic functions of Canva by examples and exercises.