How to Use Adobe Indesign to Make a Book
Learn the basics of book design with this guide to creating a front cover, and find everything you need to do to get your book ready for the printer.
Adobe InDesign is the pro designer's software of choice for creating beautiful book covers. Even if you're a relative beginner to InDesign, this tutorial will show you how you can create print-ready covers for paperback books quickly and easily.
I'll show you how I approach a cover design project, showing you everything from setting up your document correctly, to putting together an eye-catching design, to expanding your layout to include a back cover and spine, and finally exporting your design to send off to the printers.
You'll also pick up top techniques for how to approach the cover design process, to create an effective, eye-catching layout, and technical tips for making sure your cover artwork is as professional as possible.
What You'll Need to Create a Cover Design
The sheer variety and quality of professional cover designs can overwhelm a budding cover designer. But, the approach to creating a compelling cover can actually break down into simple steps that any designer can emulate.
In the same way that artists, illustrators, and photographers look to sources of inspiration to kickstart their creativity, a cover designer will have to do the same. Some designers find that reading the book they are designing for provides enough inspiration to start creating cover concepts. Others prefer not to read the book at all!
Looking at visual and written sources taken from the time period or geographical setting of the book can help to trigger contextual ideas. But some of the most iconic book covers draw on quite unusual sources. As long as a cover design is eye-catching, beautifully designed, and relevant to the subject and genre, the inspiration behind the design can be as unique and broad as you like.
In general, successful cover designs combine carefully curated visual elements. These elements fall into three categories:
- Images
- Typography
- Color
These three elements are pulled together into a layout on the cover. A cover designer might choose to prioritize image, type, or color, or a pair of these, on a particular design. This is a good technique for giving a cover a strong, graphic feel.
In the cover design for Italy, My Love, featured below, the dominant elements are type and color, with a texture overlay adding subtle depth to the design.
Cover designers must also take technical considerations into account, including choosing a standard size for the cover and setting up the cover for end use as a print or eBook cover.
The publisher and/or author can provide you with a page count and the weight of the paper stock (measured in "Grams per Square Meter," or GSM) the inside pages will be printed onto. This information in turn can help you work out the spine width of the cover.
Learn how to create a winning cover design with this five-step strategy for designing best seller covers.
Which Software Should I Use to Create a Book Cover?
Whether you're creating a cover for a print book or eBook, there's a program to suit every cover design project.
Every cover designer has their preferred software of choice, and there's no right or wrong program to use. However, most designers will use some form of publishing software to pull together the final artwork, which allows them to set up covers accurately for print or digital export.
Adobe InDesign is the market-leading publishing program, allowing advanced control over layout, typographic formatting, color palettes, and exporting for both print and ePub. The tutorial below uses Adobe InDesign because the program is an excellent all-round choice for creating a full wraparound cover for print.
Similar and less expensive alternatives include Affinity Publisher and InDesign's ancestor, QuarkXPress.
A range of self-publishing companies have also developed their own software or online apps to allow users to create quick and effective cover designs for books aimed at distribution online through Blurb, Amazon, and Lulu, among others.
Shutterstock Editor is also a fantastic entry-level cover design tool, allowing users to create their own unique designs from existing eBook cover templates.
Discover our more detailed review of the 6 best paid and free book cover design programs, from Affinity Publisher to Blurb BookWright.
1. How to Set Up Your Cover Document in InDesign
Step 1
Open InDesign and go to File > New > Document. Set the Intent of your InDesign document to Print*.
*In this tutorial we'll be creating a print paperback cover. However, if you want to create an eBook cover you should choose Web rather than print and set the dimensions of your cover in pixels. eBook covers vary in size depending on the distributor, so check out the specs recommended by Amazon and others before you begin.
Keep the number of Pages to 1 and uncheck Facing Pages.
The reason we won't be creating a document with facing pages is that the cover design should be created as one whole page, including the spine and back cover, as this is how it will be printed. The whole cover design is printed on one sheet, and then wrapped around the stack of inside pages.
For a B-Format paperback, set the Width of the page to 130 mm and Height to 198 mm*. We'll expand the width later on to accommodate for a spine and back cover.
*This is one of the commonly used standard sizes for an international paperback cover, referred to in the trade as a B-format book. There is a wide range of standard sizes to choose from depending on where you are planning to distribute your book. Discover all the common formats and sizes for books in the US and internationally here.
Add aBleed of5 mm to all edges of the page before clickingOK. This ensures that any background color or graphics extend past the trim edge of the page, removing any risk of unsightly white edges on your cover once it's been printed.
2. How to Add Color, Graphics, and Type to Your Cover
Step 1
It can be helpful to set up a series of layers in your InDesign document, to help organize the design elements on your cover.
To do this, expand theLayers panel(Window > Layers) and click on theCreate New Layer button at the bottom of the panel. Double-click new layers to edit their names.
Here, I've created three layers — Texture, Background, and Type — to set up the design for myItaly, My Lovecover.
Lock all layers except the bottom layer. We'll start working on that first.
Step 2
You can bring texture into your cover by using theRectangle Frame Tool (F) to create a frame across the whole page.
ThenFile > Place and choose a texture image like this one. ClickOpen, and allow the texture to fill the frame.
Select the image frame, then go toObject > Effects > Transparency to bring theOpacity of the texture down and make it more subtle (here to25%).
Step 3
You can build a palette of colors to use on your cover by creating new swatches in theSwatches panel(Window > Color > Swatches).
ChooseNew Color Swatch from the panel's main menu.
To ensure your colors are suitable for print, set theColor Type toProcess andColor Mode toCMYK. Next, adjust the CMYK levels. ClickAdd and thenOK to save your swatch.
You can use the same process to build up a large range of colors in theSwatches panel.
Step 4
Now you're ready to start adding images to your cover or create shapes, as I'm going to do here. Lock the Texture layer and unlock the Background layer above it.
It's always helpful to mark out the center point of your front cover. So, with the rulers visible(View > Show Rulers), drag a guide out from the left-hand ruler and drop it at65 mm.
I use thePen Tool (P) to create a triangular shape that extends from the outer bleed edge to the center of the page.
I then apply a swatch to theFill of the shape from theSwatches panel.
Step 5
I build up shapes around the right side of the front cover using thePen Tool (P), giving each a different colorFill.
When you place images, shapes or background content on the left side of the page, make sure to only extend the design up to the page edge, andNOT the bleed edge. This is because the page edge is where the right side of the spine will sit, which we'll look at a little later.
Step 6
To bring through the texture below, select all the images or shapes sitting on the Background layer. Next go toObject > Effects > Transparency. Set theMode toMultiply, and clickOK.
Step 7
Once you've created the visual backdrop for your cover, you can start to create the typography for your design. Lock the Background layer and unlock the top Typography layer.
Use the Type Tool (T) to create text frames. Format the text using either the mainControls panel running along the top of the workspace or theCharacter panel(Window > Type & Tables > Character).
Here, I've set the title of the book inAcre, and adjusted theFont Color from theSwatches panel.
Step 8
Add reviews or subtitles to your cover using theType Tool (T), setting the text in a smallerFont Size and try a contrasting font. Here I've used the serif font Adobe Caslon Pro to contrast against the sans-serif title.
3. How to Expand Your Cover
Once you've finished the design for your front cover you will need to expand the layout into a full wrap-around cover.
Because covers for both paperbacks and hardbacks are printed as one sheet, it's important that the designer sets up the artwork to include the reverse cover and spine on the same page. After working out the width of the spine (see Step 2, below), you can expand the InDesign page to accommodate for the added width of both a spine and back cover.
It's always a good idea to do this job right at the end of the cover design process, after finalizing the spine width according to the number of inside pages.
The inside pages and cover will be printed in two separate jobs. If the pages go to print first you can get an accurate spine width estimate. The printer should be able to help you with the final spine width, so make sure to ask their opinion before you expand your cover design.
Read on to find out how to accurately measure the full width of your cover, and expand your artwork using InDesign's handy Page Tool.
Step 1
Expand thePages panel(Window > Pages) andRight-Click on thePage 1 icon andDuplicate Spread.
Scroll down toPage 2 of your document. This is the page we will expand into a full cover.
Step 2
You can either ask your printer to send you a spine width for your book, or use an online spine width calculator.
I've calculated my spine width will be14.9 mm, since it will have 250 pages printed on 115gsm paper.
You can work out the total width of your expanded cover using this calculation:
Front cover width (130 mm) + Back cover width(130 mm) + Spine width (14.9 mm) = Total cover width(274.9 mm)
Step 3
Select thePage Tool (Shift+P) and click onto the page to select it.
Enter the total width value into theW text box that has now appeared along the topControls panel, and hitEnter. This will expand the page's width.
Unlock all the layers of your document. Then select all the elements on the front cover and shift this over to the right side of the page, allowing the right edge to meet the right-hand bleed edge.
Step 4
Mark out the left edge of the spine by dragging out a guide from the left-hand ruler to 130 mm.
Then mark out the center point of the back cover by dragging a guide out to 65 mm.
Step 5
A quick way to give your back cover a design is to select all the elements sitting on the Texture and Background layers andEdit > Copy, Edit > Paste them. ThenRight-Click > Transform > Flip Horizontal, and move it into position on the left side of the page.
Step 6
Fill the spine with color using theRectangle Tool (M).
Create text frames for the spine using theType Tool (T), andRight-Click > Transform > Rotate 90° CW these to move them to the right orientation. Normal practice is to place the title and author name on the spine, as well as a publisher's logo if you prefer.
You might also want to place a blurb, reviews, and a barcode on the back cover, depending on how you're planning to distribute and sell your book.
Your cover artwork is now finished, so great job! All that's left to do is to export it for printing.
4. How to Export Your Cover
Step 1
Head up toFile > Export, and chooseAdobe PDF (Print) from theFormat menu at the bottom of theExport window. Give your cover file a suitable name, then clickOK.
In theExport to Adobe PDF window that opens, select[Press Quality] from theAdobe PDF Preset menu at the top. UnderPages, set theRange to2, so that only the second page of your document is exported.
Step 2
Click onMarks and Bleeds in the window's left-hand menu, and checkAll Printer's Marks andUse Document Bleed Settings.
Then hitExport to create your PDF file. You can send this directly to the printers. They'll be thrilled you've set up your cover so professionally!
Next Steps
Now that your cover's finished, you might want to think about how to typeset the inside pages of your book. In this article you'll discover seven perfect fonts for typesetting that won't let you down.
You might also want to adapt your cover to digital format. These essential tips for creating eBooks will get you started.
Discover more tips, tutorials and inspiration for creating fantastic book cover designs:
- The Top 6 Free and Paid Book Cover Design Software
- 3 Ways to Use Stock Photos for Book Cover Designs
- How to Design a Book Cover: The 5 Elements of Best Seller Cover Design
How to Use Adobe Indesign to Make a Book
Source: https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/make-book-covers-indesign-tutorial
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