When I was but a young apprentice, my wise Art Director taught me – never create “shlock”. Unfamiliar with this term, I innocently asked what it meant.
SCHLOCK (Wikipedia) Schlock is an English word of Yiddish origin meaning “something cheap, shoddy, or inferior.” In other words it means you are settling for something other than what is best for the design.
I learned quickly that just choosing any font or having a “that’s close enough” attitude in my designs meant I was turning out shlock. Granted, several times I have had to “settle” and although the designs were well received – they could have been better. That makes the difference between a regular design and a great design.
First Impressions: the eBook Cover Design
The book cover is more than just a pretty design and letters. It surrounds your years of hard work. It hugs, holds and wraps itself around your “baby”. So then why do so many writers take their manuscripts and encase them in less than worthy clothes?
Let’s take a short journey to an online ebook retail store. Take a look at the cover design staring up at you. If you are like me, some of these covers make me cringe. They are so unappealing, I am not the least bit interested. But that is an unfair statement.
While the cover is the first impression of the book, I also look at the rating system, the publication date and the synopsis (in that order). Being a reviewer, if a book is unrated, I then look at the length of the book and its publication date — Yes, even before I read the synopsis. If the pub date is older than 5 years, then I start to wonder about the quality of the book. I read the synopsis and if intrigued I either purchase or get the sample.
What is important about this progression is I am first enticed by the cover. My feeling is, if the writer has a well-written, polished book, then they should put as much care into the cover. After all, you don’t wrap your baby in a dirty blanket, do you?
Typefaces and Fonts
When designing an e-book cover choosing the right typeface is just as important. The typeface reference book I use provides each font in 100% vector – which means I can zoom in close and the typeface remains sharp. It has helped me speed up the process of finding the right typeface for a design – and how to avoid less ideal font combinations. The book uses the top 50 fonts, that most computers already have – built in. However, occasionally I need to purchase a typeface – a necessity for a quality design.
As with writing, an e-cover design should be polished. If you are still unsure of the necessity of using the right font for a quality e-cover design, just look at any online ebook store, such as Amazon. You can easily see which authors and epublishers took the time to create an appealing, eye-catching design, compared to ones that just descided “that’s good enough.” If you take time to polish your manuscript then take the same care in its packaging and presentation.
I am not going to delve into a lot of detail on the basics of using typefaces in design. That would be better left for our eCourse. Yet, I want to stress the importance of using the correct typeface with your cover design. It needs to be a unified, cohesive unit. It must flow together, and pull the reader beyond the cover and into the pages.
Unruly Guides “First Steps” eCourses
Unruly Guides will be offering in 2012 eCourses that will help writers with the “First Steps” of eCover Design and Promotion. Keep up with Unruly Guides by subscribing to our News Feed.
A few eCourses include:
- Setting up a Blog
- The Importance of a Domain Name
- Branding Yourself
- Good Cover Design
- Effective Book Trailers
Resources and Articles
- Best Practices for Combining Typefaces: A great article about the do’s and don’ts of combining typefaces.
- The Big Book of Font Combinations: Hundreds of typeface pair ideas for student and professional designers. (Available in PDF and as an iPhone App)
- Typography Primer: A FREE PDF resource on the basics of typography.
