Typography Basics for Illustrated Book Covers: Content

November 1, 2024

Last time, we looked at how genre informed book cover typography. For this installment, we are going to look at a novel’s content: story, mood, and theme. How can we use the content itself to hone in on typography decisions?

Great content to use for a book cover includes that which:

Aligns with the genre
Provides an element unique to the book
Is visually appealing/attention-grabbing
Plays a major role in the plot

We have a range of options available to us within the content of a novel and some of it can represent the novel well, but may not work as a cover. You can narrow down content by considering how it aligns with the points above.

The best way to explain how content informs typography is to look at a few of my book covers and explain the process. Keep in mind that I start out with a much more extensive content list when I first read a book. I will go over the boiled-down content that makes it to the final cover. Let's check it out!

Worlds Apart

Content: outer space, aliens, alien cities, space ships, pre-teen suburban characters, middle school
Mood: adventure, suspense, drama, wonder, loyalty, resilience
Themes: friendship, relationships, self-discovery, science and technology

Worlds Apartrequired a clean, minimal look to the text that is ideal for the sci fi genre. The wide, short characters of this particular font, "Excluded", strongly suggests fonts of popular sci fi adventure IPs like Star Wars. The content of the novel that could inform the typography needed to be subtle, so I went with creating a material effect on the letters. In this case, I made the letters look like neon tubing. It's bright, screams "sci fi", and makes direct reference to the content of the novel. The protagonist spends most of her time in a dense futuristic city on an alien planet, which is filled with neon signs. This concept will carry through each book in the series, with the title font staying the same, but changing material to reflect new alien worlds.

Buddy the Knight and the Queen of Sorrow

Content: stuffed animal characters, fairytale-like lands (dark castle), medieval objects and archetypes (swords, amulets, wizards)
Mood: classic, nostalgic, epic, adventure, suspense
Themes: friendship, courage, teamwork

Buddy reads like a classic fairytale about a brave knight and makes many mentions of chivalry and knighthood. This was a primary focus for the font and motif elements. The choice of using a decorative border motif, especially in gold, makes a direct reference to the beautiful gold foil on vintage books, including illustrated storybooks that often have a series of "vignettes" on the cover with scenes or characters. This partnered with the medieval feel of the serif font ("Yana") brings together the themes and mood of the novel. Delicate swashes, like the swoopy on the "W" fill out the negative space in the composition and adds a little extra decoration that you see in font choices for fairytale book covers. Also note the banner elements for the author name and in the title, which suggests heraldic flags. The content of the novel makes a more direct appearance in the border motif with the inclusion of the owl, which is one of the important stuffed animal characters.

Princess Rouran and the Dragon Chariot of 10,0000 Sages

Content: Chinese mythological creatures (dragon Qiu niu), magic door, Chinese zither, Rouran Khaganate
Mood: philosophical, surreal, mystery, adventure, epic
Themes: time-travel, society and culture, teamwork, historic events, mythology

Princess Rouran is a YA novel with some relatively sophisticated topics, so I went with a delicate approach to incorporating the content of the novel into the typography. I used Trajan Pro 3 for the title, which is a great go-to for YA and adult fantasy. It has a scholarly feel that compliments the historical elements of the novel. I was able to add visual interest by using line-based decorative motifs that I found in pictures of ancient Chinese and Mongolian artifacts. The door knob features a more authentic motif to the Rouran Khaganate (a major setting), while the line motifs on the top and bottom are designs that can technically be found in the same region albeit at a later time period. The motifs bring in a cultural element while the clouds shapes suggest fantasy and mythology. An inner swoosh to the "O" in "Rouran" mimics the horn-like shapes in the motifs and is a small way to add whimsy to the minimal font.

New Canvas Prints

I have a new product that is truly the bee's knees. This is the first stretched canvas print that I've ordered and added to my Etsy store. It's signed and ready to hang without the need for a frame or plexiglass! Could a more perfect gift exist for your mushroom-loving friends?

Go to Etsy

Stock image at top designed by Freepik

Typography Basics for Illustrated Book Covers: Genre

October 1, 2024

Typography to book covers is like the right frame for a painting. It can elevate the art or undermine it. I am going to boil down some beginner tips to approaching cover typography. Let's get into it!

The Golden Rule: Make Every Design Choice Intentional

This applies to all cover design scenarios and if you can only focus on one thing when designing book covers, remember this. When selecting a font or modifying it, make sure there is a good reason for it. The intent behind your typography decisions should be communicating:

the genre
the novel's story/mood/theme
the composition's balance/overall concept

Poor design choices fail to address these factors or try to address a surface-level version. Sometimes typographic choices can be based on trends, but if the trendy font or design concept fails to communicate in these 3 areas for your specific cover situation, it will appear out of place.

The Genre

Genre dictates so much about font choice that you can deduce a novel's genre just by looking at the spine. Go to a library or book store and guess the genre by the font choice on the spine. It's a great exercise!

I will give a few examples from the genres I know best, which is YA and Middle Grade fantasy/sci fi, but some observations can be applied to other genres or conversely show what fonts don't work.

Fonts By Age-Based Genre:

Middle Grade Fiction Fonts: Can be all-caps or mix of caps and lower-case. Can use "hand-drawn" and "naïve" style fonts, conservative on swashes, but letterforms are full of character. Leans towards heavier fonts

YA Fiction Fonts: Usually all-caps except in Paranormal. More variation in weight including thin fonts, heavily modulated fonts, and script fonts. Can include a moderate amount of embellishments. Differs from Adult genres by more color and expressive styles

Fonts By Literary Genre:

Fantasy: Makes greater use of serif and script fonts than other genres, especially fonts that reflect "older" styles. Can use ornaments, glyphs, and other decorative elements. There are a range of font color and textural options depending on sub-genre.

Popular Fantasy Sub-Genres:

Epic/High: Often uses serif fonts that can be medieval and gothic-inspired. Tends to be bold, but elegant. Font color and texture can be metallic or stone-like to suggest royalty or antiquity

Urban: Has flexibility with font style, but often uses sans-serif, graffiti-like, or angular letters to communicate the urban element. Textures can be gritty or on the other end, neon and glowy for city settings

Dark: Makes use of serif fonts that can be gothic, pointy, and distressed in YA. Middle grade showcases more gritty sans-serif fonts

Paranormal: Uses a variety of serif, sans-serif, and script that evoke mystery. Is distinct for many instances of simple lower-case lettering in YA paranormal as well as delicate script fonts with flourishes

Historical: Uses period-inspired fonts that can be serif or calligraphic

Mythic: Uses serif, runic, and inscribed fonts that evoke the visual properties of corresponding ancient written languages. Metallic, stone-like, and celestial textures work well with this genre

Fairytale: Here you will find the most ornate serif and script fonts with generous flourishes. Metallic and glowing effects can also be applicable

Sci Fi: Makes more use of sans-serif fonts, especially fonts that reflect "newer" and "modern" styles. Usually stays away from ornaments and decorative elements and creates visual interest by how the font is incorporated into the image. Font color is often white or light-colored on darker backgrounds, but can utilize silver metallic and neon-inspired finishes that communicate sleek and futuristic

Example Sci Fi Sub-Genres:

Space Opera: Uses bold, futuristic sans-serif fonts. Letters can be notably wide or use heavy kerning to suggest the vastness of space

Dystopian: Uses gritty, distressed sans-serif fonts that are minimalist or industrial. Muted tones like gray, black, and red help express bleak and harsh settings

I will get into how you incorporate the content of the novel as well as working with the overall composition in future typography forays! Feel free to send me your cover design questions and I will fit them in my newsletter!

Stock images designed by Freepik

New Book Covers

July 24, 2024

We won't have a deep dive this month, but a major artwork update that I hope you will enjoy! Here are new covers I designed and illustrated, soon to be published as well as their concepts. I am working with a slew of genres, so I have included that info for the sake of comparison.

I love designing motifs and shiny things; lucky for me I had both for Buddy the Night. The motif frame provided a classic fairytale look that was perfect for the teddybear knight.

Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy

Clash of Crystals also uses a framing element like Buddy the Knight. The novel is a little bit of "Avatar the Last Airbender" meets "Hunger Games". That plus the references to graphic novels in the story led me to channel my inner manga-ka and use graphic elements and linework. The anime room in my heart never left me. :)

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy (Trial, Dystopian)

Mists of Mbali has elements of realism along with mysticism and magic. It was important to highlight the protagonist's eyes and hint at other magic elements.

Genre: YA/New Adult Urban Fantasy

Illustrating Wings and Dynamic Compositions

November 2, 2023

I am happy to announce that my "Cover Story" exhibit that was up at Artifactory is going to have a new location! It is moving to Pappajohn Biomedical Discovery Building (PBDB) on the University of Iowa Campus. The art will be up from November 8 to March 1, 2024, with the building accessible to visitors from 7am-6pm Monday-Friday. This is a beautiful location on the skywalk between buildings. They even have a Java house in PBDB so you can grab a coffee while browsing. There will be a short reception on Nov 16 from 4:30-5:30pm. All are welcome!

With all of the busyness this year, I did not get around to sharing one of my favorite covers. It's a YA fantasy with bird people and dragons. What's not to love? I will share how I refined this composition to make it more dynamic and how I utilized reference material for believable wings.

Below are the preliminary sketches featuring two of the main characters. It was a no brainer to include a dragon and it was also important to show the relationship between the two characters. That narrowed down the scope of possibilities, which is helpful when you have a hundred directions to go in for a book cover.

We went with the third sketch which has the best narrative clarity showing the two characters preparing to fight the dragon. It also illustrated the spirit world from the novel in the top part of the composition, which gave it an advantage over the other two.

For this cover, I branched out to explore expressive glyphs in the title font. There were also key elements in the composition to utilize for overlap effects, such as the floating shapes. I made an effort to give the title some effervescence by using loopy letters that complimented the wispy background.

With the concept phase completed, I set out gathering my usual reference material for all parts of the illustration. I use indirect reference for nature-based content, like wings. Keep in mind that wings are just big flappy hands, which is a helpful basis for anatomy and disturbing thoughts of chicken people.

Above is my page of reference just for wings. I look up the birds that the figures are based on and use a flying fox for the dragon wings. Pro tip is to use big bats instead of small bats for dragon wing reference as the proportions and physics will be closer. Big bat wings are really bendy under all that weight and the anatomy is easier to see. Also they're cute, so treat yourself.

You might ask why I have so many bird wing references? This is because there is no perfect reference wrapped into one image (unless you pose a model or maquette), so I have one photo that gives insight into back-lighting, another for the general pose, and then one photo might be perfect for just one of the wings.

These are the 3D models I used for the figures and the dragon. This gives me the best information for lighting, anatomy, and perspective. It's not the perfect reference, but I can synthesize it with my reference photos of real animals to get the right balance of realism and believability. Both of these models are from Daz3D, which is my go-to for people especially because I can pose quickly and customize faster than models built from scratch.

Here is an annotated version of the characters to help you understand what I take or don't take from the reference image. I am making comparisons to the cover sketch of the figures and decide what is a helpful improvement and what should be disregarded in terms of lighting and pose. Most of the reference from this image is adopted, but the poses of the hands are not naturalistic. I take some photos of my own hands, which gives me better reference.

That's about half of my reference material for this book, so there is even more where this came from. Good, accurate reference material is your friend!

How Reality Can Enhance Fantasy Book Covers

June 7, 2023

Fantasy novels set in different universes depend heavily on the art and culture of the real world, especially ancient civilizations. Princess Rouran relies even more so as it blends modern-day, mythology, and for this book, elements of the Rouran Khaganate who ruled over present Mongolia and northeast China. It takes some care to represent objects and mythical characters from a culture spanning thousands of years and putting in the effort makes artwork more effective and far more interesting.

Here are the preliminary concepts. My art direction for the covers was to choose elements that show something clearly modern and "real" alongside something fantastical. we decided to go with the dragon, who signals a shift in reality and is a guide for the protagonist. The doorway is perfect for this as both a literal and symbolic entryway to the "magical".

You can see in the color concepts that most of the composition has come together. Instead of talking about the rendering process, I want to look at the indirect reference material that went into important design decisions.

The dragon's name in this story is Qiuniu, which comes from the Chinese legend of the 9 Sons of Dragon. Much like the book's approach to "myths are real", I went with a literal approach to the dragon's anatomy, basing it off of traditional representation. The Chinese dragon has a consistent and iconic design, so finding good reference material was straightforward. The color scheme is a little less typical, but I did find plenty of colorful dragons for inspiration.

I was excited about the motif elements on this book cover and found a few examples with the cloud-like shapes I was looking for. The artifacts on the right are Han dynasty.

For the door knob element I was able to have a more direct Rouran influence. The author provided reference to an Iron Age exhibit of artifacts from the Great Steppe, which has a relationship to Rouran design. The horse was hugely important to the Rourans and nomadic peoples of the region, so when I found a horse-shaped motif, I sneakily turned it into a design for the door knob.

It's always good practice to be intentional with every aspect of an illustration!

I am bringing up an album cover illustration I did in the past for musician/composer Myles Power Davis. His EP is out and it is absolute fire! Definitely give it a listen if you like to jam to jazzy instrumentals.

Lastly, I have been slowly adding my art show pieces to my Etsy store and there are so many more framed pieces now!

GO GET ARTSY THINGS!