Category: Book Cover
For the first time, I put categories into an ArtOrder challenge. The judges and I had a conversation about the categories, and the pieces that folks chose to enter into specific categories. Lauren Panepinto, Creative Director for Orbit books, and one of the nefarious judges made the excellent suggestion that it would be great if ArtOrder would feature a conversation about what type of entries would be appropriate for a given category. She was even kind enough to walk the talk and kick off the discussion.
Here is Laura’s thoughts on what would make a successful book cover submission.
“A book cover is different from gaming art and concept art and editorial art in a way that most people don’t really think about. In fact, a book cover is first and foremost a piece of advertising. Whether in a store full of covers, or on a website full of thumbnails, a book cover has less than a second to catch someone’s eye and drag them in closer. A book cover needs to be a visual fishhook, first making people’s eyes stop and rest on them, then hopefully either picking up the book and flipping it over (or clicking on the thumbnail and reading the description). The cover must be 3 things: First it must be eye-catching over all else. Then it must speak to the target audience. Then it must portray what’s going on in the book. In that order of importance.
From the artist’s point of view, an Art Director should be giving you scene ideas (sometimes I know exactly what we need, sometimes it’s more up to the artist to be creative), any descriptions they have of characters/scenes/weaponry/etc (I’ll give you a manuscript if we have it, although we often don’t yet, and although we’re thrilled if you want to read it, I don’t rely on that), and maybe a note about comparison authors and books which will tell you the target audience. From all of that raw info it is your job to create an image following the 3 needs above.
First, make your composition vertical. Yes, I know there are some wraparound covers, and you can always pitch a wrap idea but it’s the front that you will be judged on and generally artists forget that. A wrap should always be an after-thought. There needs to be a clear visual hierarchy. This means you want to control (through your artists’ bag of tricks like lighting/color/composition) what the viewer sees first, then second, then so on. That first thing has to be the most important thing in the cover, the most interesting, because if that doesn’t hook a viewer they will never see the rest. And keep it simple. If a cover is too busy a viewer’s eye glosses right over it. That, almost more than any other point, is the difference between a book cover and something like a Magic card. There’s almost always much less going on, more often a cool scene, or a solid character in an interesting pose, and the rest is background.
The best advice I can give about doing book covers is to look at book covers. Really go sit in a bookstore and look at them. You’ll start to pick up the visual language right away.”
Now, you can take this information in many different ways.
• You can use it to better inform the piece you create if you are going to enter a piece in the Book Cover category (adult or childrens).
• If you have targeted a book publisher, with the intention of doing book covers, you can use the information to help define the requirements your piece should fulfill upon, as part of your portfolio building strategy. You are taking part in the portfolio building class, right?
• You could get inspired to learn more about the book cover category of work, or one of the other categories and take on a research project.
• You could choose to proceed under the assumption that you already know all about the book cover category, and continue to get the same results that you’ve been getting.
Who do you choose to be today?
aaron, I have been researching book-covers for the last few weeks after deciding I want to target some of those companies in my portfolio (portfolio building class), and if you look at even the wrap around covers it usually just a continuation of the background elements, but the characters most often always appear on the right side (what would be the front cover). Also most books have some kind of text on the back (a synopsis, or maybe praise or accolades about the writer or for previous books), this works well with a background that is not overly busy. So I can see why AD’s would say to focus primarily on the front cover.
I was under the impression the category was: Book, Adult – Suggested entries include art appearing inside…or on the covers of adult books.
More to the topic:
How much devotion should an artist spend toward text and typesetting? While I was working on one of my entries I was constantly aware of where I would want the text…but feel a little inadequate with that aspect because of my limited experience (except for a little print advertising experience).
I was always under the impression publishers where looking for artwork so they can ‘design’ a cover…not looking for an artist to ‘create’ a cover. Am I off base here?
After feedback from the judges, I’m going to be splitting interior and cover submissions into separate categories. We judge the art in very different ways. Laura’s write-up addresses book cover design.
The artist should spend 0 time on text and typesetting. We never ask an artist to “design” a book cover. In fact, most good art directors will send an artist a template to use. The template will show areas of text, logos, and other design elements. The issue for the artist isn’t to do the design, but rather to understand how to work with and around design. The most successful cover artists are those that integrate the design elements into their art composition…rather than just creating art that will sit under the design.
is that more clear?
Yes. Thanks Jon.
So many (especially current) book covers obviously use the typesetting to further the content and design. I mean look at the example above. The text completes the composition. If you were to remove the text the composition would suffer.
I really like to hear that most publishers will give you a template.
I was never presently aware that vertical compositions were the way to go as far as book covers go. But if you look at how the majority of books are formatted it totally makes sense. It helps to know these strategies while trying to beef up the portfolio. Thank you both Lauren and Jon.
Great information….Thanks!