I once again saw a tweet. It was talking about these covers and how they kind of all look
very very similar. Hi it's Divya G what does the g stand for? The g stands for fiction is such
a wide Genre that when it comes to book covers, it tends to have the most
amount of versatility and variability. Yet sporting the shelves you might have noticed
this sub-category of literary fiction where it's bold and bright and colorful. Now, I
don't know what to call this um there's an article that called it "the starbucks frappuccino" or
i don't know like: I put my white t-shirt in the wash with all my colours and now it looks like a
fake DIY tie-dye that I'm gonna sell on Etsy for five pounds.... maybe a little bit too specific.
and so I was looking at this and I was like okay yeah cool it's peng but why? I created a pinterest
board okay what are the common elements? Shapes so this is either going to be cut out designs of
humans or random shapes and another thing that i had in common was like all these colors so pinks,
blue,s purples, reds. Basically every single wavelength and visible light spectrum that is
like perceptible by the human eye. Title most likely is going to be a sans series font and
it's kind of playful it kind of interacts with the background and the cover a little bit. But
why? Why is it built like that? So I did a bit of googling and then google was like "well babes it's
all marketing innit". The pandemic brought a pause to in-store browsing. Whilst some of these covers
might have caught your attention in the store with this bright dust jacket or with the gold foils and
the texture, it's a lot harder to do that on an e-commerce website. When you're going to
buy a book they're basically battling to the death - hundreds of other covers in this really tiny
little square and then because they're flat they lose any texture that you might see on
a physical dust jacket such as embossing any sort of metallic or gold foil. And so for that reason,
essentially, covers kind of have to just try and get your attention as quick as possible and it
also has to scale down well into like a really small icon. Social media creator economy. If
you look at penguin random houses' website they literally have an article or a list
called "instagrammable book covers" and that is all you need to know about where book cover
designs are going these days. let's take a look at the human forms on this covers okay.
For example, look at these. They're abstract, they're slightly difficult to decipher and so
your eyes kind of linger on it a little bit and you're like what is that? Is that a tree?
What do things? Who in the hell put the muffin in the freezer?
Like abstract art the covers are a way of seeing. And so you start to search for meaning within the
shapes and that is exactly the moment when you become a victim! Because this is exactly what
the publishers and the designers want you to do they want you to look at the cover and go
"that's pretty oh what is that" and before you know it you've checked out at w.h smith and now
it's in your bag. Quite a few of these stories do center around sort of marginalized communities.
Vanishing half centres around two twins. They're black and one chooses to pass as white
and the other doesn't. As such, this novel explores race and identity and
the prevalent inequalities in American society. They share the same color palette but in different
parts of the body so this kind of cleverly symbolizes the fact that they are both distinct
individuals with sort of like different paths. So they're separate yet they're linked. Faces
slightly merged was very indicative of like the twins um and the theme of like identity...
so I said "okay let's create my own shit version then shall we?!" I like how on these covers you
can't see the details too much of the face because it leaves an empty vessel for the
author to fill in with the description or for the reader's imagination. For this i use zendaya
for literally no other reason than the fact that she's literally so beautiful and every time she
posts a selfie like my astigmatism just fixes itself. I'm just like lis- I have to see! I traced
the outlines of her face her hair and her body and i kind of had to change the hair because i
thought that i would end up doing one face upside down the other face like that [right side up] so
it'd be easier to seamlessly merge the hairs together in some sort of like flow state. I
didn't end up doing that. But it stopped looking like Zendaya like really quickly
so like- what- what was the point? And for colours my thought process behind that was
you really just want your cover to scream "be whooo you areee for your prideee".
I wanted the two girls to be the main focus and subject of attention so i was "background
you're gonna have to take a back step yeah". So I just chose whatever color doesn't draw
too much focus away from that. In the design community there is this new gradient noise
trend going on i was like okay yes. What i did was I just played around for like a couple of
minutes until i found something that i thought: decent. Yeah so i made this like at one in the
morning and the only thing in my head was like that tiktok sound that's like you "look like a
garbage rat you look like you called out a sewer at the infestation and you look like garbage".
So boom my little friend Remy's here. I had to dissect him a little bit. A little bit less
conspicuous: a leaf but it's actually a rat! Who's gonna know? Only us two. I drew some wood grain
lines and then i messed around with the opacity. The title was gonna be bright faces with blobs
I spent a good 30 minutes looking up kerning and typography and playing that kerning game because
a lot of times whenever i make these book covers i kind of just like slap the title on top but if
you're gonna be doing this for real you know? And your typography is gonna take center stage,
the title and the background has to work together in a union and not like a group project with just
one person *coughs* me ends up doing all the work and everyone else puts their name
on it but i digress- Here we go! This is my i love graphic design is my passion version compared to
the serious probably educated professionals who have been designing for like over 10 20 30 years
yeah- that's it. If you've read any of this hit me up with recommendations before you do leave
if you could either like or subscribe or join the bell notifications on or comment really does help
support the algorithm which helps my channel which helps support me as a creator to do this. If you
have suggestions of other cover design things that you've noticed or seen you know you want me to do
some of that let me know and those are follow me on the twitter and the instagram *gibberish* okay
i'll see you guys next time oh hugs okay I smell a bit this time it's fine okay. Yeah be who you are
for your pride I'm gonna go- boop these book covers are like the is it cake trend?
Right on the outside you're like oh shit cake delicious i want you cut it open bam it's worms
it's like... i don't know it's a kidney bean- it's it's a kidney bean salad it's ramen... it's made
out of styrofoam. I do love the style of the title and the cover art playing together- sounds weird-