You may choose either the design from the Monogram assignment or one of the patterns from the above Letterform Pattern assignment to illustrate a book dust jacket. You should think of the designs that came from either the Monogram or the Letterform Pattern assignment as ways of generating ideas for the illustrations. In this case, that means that any version from the entire process of those two assignments/exercises that give you a meaningful and creative direction for the Book Dust Jacket illustration is open to you.
First and foremost, you should think of the final illustration as a symbol. It should visually suggest, or symbolically represent, the subject/topic of the book that it covers. The process of getting there requires you to narrow down your experiments you did in Illustrator and Photoshop. Carefully analyze each design. Ask yourself “what are the design’s main characteristics”. You should come up with a short list of at least 6 characteristics for your design choice. This lists might include words such as; bold, mysterious, expressive, playful or candy-like, licorice-like, fence-like, etc. Then, taking your cue from these lists, decide on a category or genré of book (mystery, adventure, love story, comedy, satire, etc.). Finally, match your design (based on its defining characteristics) to one of these book categories and either redesign the dust jacket/cover for an existing book or make up a title for a book that could be in that genre.
tip: You can look online for existing books from the genré that you picked and redesign the cover for that book using the information about the author, publishing company, etc. that you find on it already. On the other hand, you could instead completely make up the names and information on your own. A main point of our assignment is how you treat that information typographically.
Layout your dust jacket design in Illustrator. Use sizes from a real book that you own. The final size of each panel depends upon the size of the book that you wrap. (you will be wrapping the final print around this book for you to photograph, so it must fit). Consider the possibilities of a wrap-around design (one that extends across front, spine and back panels).
The illustration/example below is only an example. If you are creating a dust jacket for a different sized book, you will need to adjust these measurements accordingly.
Regardless of the size of the book, you dust jacket must contain the following 5 panels
- front
- back
- spine
- inside front flap
- back inside flap
Pay particular attention to these design concepts:
- Grouping and Hierarchy
- Use of Typographic Variables
- Line length (Apply the 40–60 characters per line rule of thumb)
- Avoid Typographic widows
- Nesting
- Printing with crop marks (otherwise known as trim marks)
- Print to Epson Printers
Pay particular attention to the typography treatments of the following information:
on the front
- Author
- Title
on the spine
- Author
- Title
- Publishing Company Logo
on the back
- bar code Generator screenshot (command + shift + 4)
- Publishing Company
on the inside front or back
- info about the author + picture + other books written by her/him
- info or short synopsis about the book/story