Final Book Cover, Seperated Parts

Idea Book Covers

Book Cover Evaluation

Effectiveness:

My final product matches my original idea as I used the same basic image of a house that looks like a child has drawn it. I also used the font which put the letters into a small box like the scrabble letters. I started my book cover by finding a basic background and I thought of the idea of a kind of old looking paper and I thought that that texture and look will give the cover an extra touch as its mixing an old looking book with a modern day problem. The method I used to create my book cover is very basic as I simply found an image on google where I was looking for a child drawn house but it came up with a range of houses where some were coloured in, I didn’t really like these ones as they contain too much colour because the more black and white it looks it creates a bigger effect as you have to think of the colours or it represents a child’s simple pencil drawing. Eventually I found a pencil drawing of a simple house. By getting this image I could start creating my book cover. I started with the front cover in Photoshop where I could put the background image and the child’s drawing together. I resized the drawing to fit the size of the front cover by as you can see it only just fit. After the front cover was done I started on the back cover where I had to put a brief description about the book. But I thought that it looks a bit too plain so I decided to go back on to google and look for an image the fitting to the story. I looked at an image of a child with their grandmother and I placed this into the back cover. I tried the image without any white but it came up too dark so I decided to leave it how it was but what it does is puts a bit of light/colour into the book. As soon as I had everything in place I saved the different parts of the book and changed to adobe InDesign where I can add the text and link all the pages together to create the finished product. I’d say that my book cover doesn’t quite reach professional standard as the house has lines going through it and the front cover has a bit of white by the tree which should have been removed in the editing process. This book cover made by a professional is the kind of thing I was going for as there’s a lack of colour where it’s only present in the name of the book and the author. I want my book to try and show that every child wants to know where their home is but sometimes there’s a journey involved and I wanted to show that. The target audience for this book could be anyone aged 14-20 as it’s an emotional story about a young boy around the age of 14 and is fitting for anyone around that age to read. From this book cover I have learnt to use adobe InDesign as the program can be a handful as use have to open a new image box every time you insert an image so I thought I’d get around this but doing it in Photoshop first and then insert the image then add text on top. By doing this I worked around the difficulties that I found with the program. If I continued with this I think I’d draw my own image for the front cover so that I know exactly what I wanted but if I used the same image I’d have to go back to remove the white and double check for any other white parts. The image used on the back cover is a little too bright so I’d tone down the white or I’d found/draw an image as once again I’d know exactly what I’d want. I would possibly tone down the background to make it look a bit brighter.

 

Source of information:

For my ideas I got them from the books:

‘Push’ by Sapphire,’ Goodnight Mister Tom’ by Michelle Magorian and ‘The Color Purple’ by Alice Walker

The images that I used in my book cover I got off google images including the background.

 

Production Process:

Pre-production: In this stage I was looking for an idea that I would like on that was related to Equity and Diversity which could have been a lot of things like abuse, disabilities, etc. as I was looking at relevant books I came across one that I have previous read ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ and I thought that this what a good starting point. I remembered that the book is about child abuse and I started to wonder if there are many other books like this and that’s when I came across the other two. Now that I had done my research I needed to think of a story for my book on child abuse. I thought of a basic idea and then started developing it so I know what I could use for the description on the back cover.

Production: At this stage I was looking for the images that would be used on my book cover. Eventually I came across one or two that I could use effectively and so I used these on the examples so that I can see which pictures looked good on each type of style of book layout. After these examples I decided which one I liked and stayed that idea. Once the idea was picked I developed it so that it expanded into the front, bind and back cover. I started with my example and changed a few things like the background; I believed that it wasn’t dark enough so I decided to look for a new one which will fit into my book cover. I stuck with the letters in the boxes as I thought that it’s a nice and new way to display the title; the title reminds me of alphabet letters from scrabble and a child has put them together to make the words of the title. I also added my name to the bottom of the book to show that I’m the author.  With the bind I had to create a text box for each letter otherwise the text would continue into the front page. With the back cover I wrote the synopsis and underneath it I inserted an image which is a clue to the story but the readers don’t know until they’ve read the book. I personally think that the black and white drawn image stands out too much as it’s the only bit of colour on the cover.

Post-Production: This stage involves fixing up little bits and pieces. One of the things that I had to edit was the house drawing as it was originally black and white so I used ‘magic eraser’ in photoshop and now that I’ve finished the book cover I noticed that there is still small amounts of white in it (The tree). Also the house itself has lines going through the door which is an inconvenience that I couldn’t fix in photoshop so I left it and still used it in my final design.  The child and grandmother drawing was actually a family holding hands so I decided to cut them out and use the image of child and grandmother holding hands because it’s the only relevant part to my book.

 

Finished Product:

The design that I wanted was a book that looks like it could been done by a child so that it could possibly represent the idea that a child has put finishing touch on the book and make it feel more personal. I believe that I was pretty close to reaching it but I think I let myself down with the final product as I could have drawn a simple house myself and could have put a boy walking up towards it. Also with the image on the back cover could have been a lot better as I couldn’t find anything with a boy and a grandmother together alone unless they were with the whole family so I ended up having to photoshop it which didn’t go too badly. The image on the back is kind of unnecessary but the back looked empty without it as I had a lot of space under the synopsis.

I think that it is appropriate for my target audience which is late teenagers as the book is quite similar to ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ and that book is read in most schools to people in year 8 – year 11. Also the book teaches teenagers about child abuse and the effects that it can cause to the child and the adults too.