6 Days of Nothing but Book Covers
Task: Create a book cover design every day for 6 days.
Timeline: 2 weeks to prepare and 1 week to execute= 3 weeks
Programs: Photoshop, Procreate, Illustrator
Getting to Know the Project
I am excited to present to you a project where I created a book cover design every day for 6 consecutive days. This project involved me choosing a professional design and reverse engineering it to understand the style rules and elements that were being used. I then took this information and began applying it in a transformative way to a book cover design.
The purpose of this 6-day project was to take a professional design, reverse engineer it, and understand the design decisions. This was a great way for me to understand the design choices in the design and why the design looked good. I could then take those choices and make a design using a similar style and transformative elements.
In this case study, I will walk you through one book cover design, from start to finish, so that you can understand the process behind this project.
Project Timeline
This process was broken into 3 weeks. The first 2 weeks involved a preparation phase of mood boarding, reverse engineering, sketching, refining, and doing additional prep like choosing colors and fonts. The last week was when I created the book covers but only had 24 hours to create 1 design. Crazy, right!?
Let's Begin
I will break my process into three phases pre-production, production, and post-production. Please enjoy my project breakdown, problems and solutions, and the final product!
I completed the pre-production, production, and post-production phases for all 6 designs, but I will walk you through the book cover design that I call "Zelk", from which I drew inspiration from my favorite video game! I'll let you guess which one.
Pre-Production
Mood boards
To begin, I collected designs and created an inspirational mood board. This mood board consisted of designs that I was interested in recreating, understanding, and then using as inspiration to create a design. I chose 6 designs from this mood board to begin the pre-production phase of reverse engineering, sketching, and completing additional prep.
Reverse Engineering
This process involved taking the original design and sketching it out on paper. The design I chose was a black-and-white coloring page design. I loved how this design looked, and since one of my weaknesses is illustration, I thought it would be a great learning opportunity! As I sketched this design, I took note of the style rules to know what was working well, what elements were being used, and how placement and hierarchy were being applied.
Business purpose, Concept and Message, Elements and Ideas
The next step was taking the style rules, and coming up with a business purpose, a concept and message, elements, and ideas for the new design. The business purpose for all of the designs was a book cover. The concept and message would tell my viewers what the book was going to be about and what genre it was. I wrote out elements and ideas that would be part of the new design. This gave me a starting point as I began the sketching phase.
Sketching
Once I had the business purpose, concept and messages, and elements and ideas, I started the 2-hour sketching phase which was broken into 5 phases. Each phase of sketching went into more detail than the phase before it. Respectively, the phases are exploration, ideation, iteration, polishing, and refinement.
Phase 1: Exploration Phase 2: Ideation Phase 3: Iteration
Phase 4: Polishing
All of this was meant for something! The sketching phase was meant to produce two very well-refined sketches I could use during the execution of my book covers. I ended up creating three sketches for this book cover because I noticed that each time I drew it, it got better. I was also learning illustration and thought that the practice would only benefit me!
Phase 5: Refinement
Additional Preparation
It's almost here! This is the last pre-production step before the start of the execution days! To make each design go quicker I did additional prep to gather colors, fonts, and composition ideas. In the case of this design, I took reference photos to get the placement and perspective of the body correct and I gathered a list of possible fonts for the titles.
Reference Photos List of Possible Fonts
Production
Design Execution
The execution of the book cover designs was a 6-day process where I created 1 design in 24 hours consecutively for 6 days. The amount of preparation I went through before the execution helped the design process go much quicker. The longest design took me 5 hours and the rest took me 2-3 hours.
Every design involved photography, illustration, or vector design. For this design, I added the all of the text first to get know how much space I could use for the design. Next I took my sketch into procreate and began tracing over it. I adjusted and changed the placement, sizes, and details of things as I drew it. When the sketch was completed, I added shadows for dimension, rounded off corners, and made any other adjustments that were needed. 5 hours later, I was done!
A problem I faced while completing all 6 designs was the lack of feedback. I am used to receiving feedback at least 2 or 3 times before being done with a design. Due to the 24-hour time restraint, I couldn't get feedback for my designs. I solved this problem by starting my design early in the morning and finishing it in the evening giving me time to reflect. I then went in, in the evening, and made final changes.
I believe that this design matches the style from the original design while also being transformative!
Original Design My Design
Post-Production
The final thing to do was to create mock-ups for each design! All done and ready to destress!
Key Takeaways & Final Designs
This project was a great learning opportunity for me. I learned how to reverse engineer designs, not to copy them, but to learn from the design. I learned what was working well and then I applied those things to my design.
I learned a lot about time management, and how to make a schedule so that I was completing the project tasks on time. I believe I stepped away from this project with some nice design pieces.
I hope you have learned a little about me and my design process. I would be a good asset to a company as a designer. Contact me if you would like to know more about this project or about the other work that I have completed. Thank you so much for viewing my project! Here are all 6 book cover designs!
