Book Format & Design
Project Context
Many authors are choosing to self-publish books because of how accessible it is to do now. I was honored to be asked to help with the cover design and book layout for this one. I have found I rather enjoy doing book layouts because they incorporate both a creativity in the layout and design but also are full of detail when it comes to typesetting.
Goal
Not marketed toward only women, though the author was expecting most of her readers to be women.
She wanted something simplistic.
This was the Pinterest inspiration board for the cover design. And my goal was to create something that was cohesive with her personal brand but not overly matchy-matchy.
Process
Her style felt very magazine-esque to me, but also very feminine, so her request to not specifically market to women was a little bit challenging. The most obviously prominent trait across her Pinterest board was the handwritten script, which happened to work well with her brand, so I opted to go that direction. I also saw a lot of cleanliness in the designs - with a focus on simplicity and typography. Keeping those things in mind, this was the first set of cover designs I came up with.
From this first set, we opted to go with the design on the right, but with a few revisions. First, we did opt to go with her brand’s script font, even though I originally didn’t want it too matchy. I felt that it would actually add another layer of cohesion to the design. Second, we opted to simplify the book’s subtitle to clean up the concept and the design. And lastly, we opted to change the title to a sans serif font for cleanliness. The main goal of the design was to capture a clean, very minimalistic look.
When it came to the design of the layout, my goal was to keep to the same goals as the cover. Simple typography, minimalistic feel, easy-to-read, but with a few elements to keep it visually interesting.
Outcome
This is the final cover design. This book was printed as a 112-page paperback book.
The final inside layout incorporated the same script font from the cover for the chapter titles. It also included section headings that stood out. A few other places have some diamond shape bullet point lists. The goal for the inside was to keep it easy-to-read.
