Designing Book Covers in InDesign

Despite the underlying message of this adage, publishers place considerable importance on book covers and jackets. (Although book covers and book jackets have much in common, for simplicity I will refer to both as book covers for now. Later in this article I will go into greater detail to explain their similarities and differences.) Just ask any designer who has worked hard trying to please a fickle publisher when designing a book’s cover. Yet who among us isn’t seduced by a well-designed cover when strolling through an airport bookstore before a long flight? The key to designing a book jacket lies in the execution of the layout. For designers and larger publishers who specialize in creating book covers by the boatload, a couple of excellent scripts exist to automate the process (see “More Cover Resources” at the end of this article). But because this article is for the occasional book designer, I’ll forgo these scripts in favor of designing the file step-by-step (which I rather enjoy).

Jackets, Please

A book cover is exactly that. Some books (mass-market paperbacks, for example) consist of only a front cover, back cover, and spine. Laying out such a book is easy. Take the size of the front cover, double it, add the spine width, and you’re done. Let’s give it a try using a 5 inch × 7 inch book cover.

Single-Page Document Setup

From inside InDesign, choose File > New > Document. Deselect Facing Pages and leave Primary Text Frame unchecked. Orientation should be set to Landscape. Click the Preview button in the lower left corner. In the Width field, enter the width of your cover (5 inches in our example). The book’s actual cover width will be larger than 5 inches, but bear with me. Now we’ll add the back cover

into the same Width field. The simplest way to do this is to insert your cursor after 5 inches, type *2 to multiply the front value twice, and press Tab. Voilà! So now we have the width of the front and back covers, totaling 10″. (Okay, chances are you already calculated the answer to this high-level math in your head, but what if the cover width was instead 5.875″? Or 12p3.7 picas? Figure those out, Einstein!) We still need to add in the spine width. Going back in our example to our 10-inch width, insert your cursor in the Width field and type the plus sign (+). After the plus, type in the spine width. For our example, let’s assume that our spine width measures 5/8 inch (see sidebar “Calculating Spine Width”). Inserting our cursor back into the Width field of the New Document dialog box, add 0.625 to change the document width to 10.625 inches. But wait. We also need to factor in a value called turn. Turn is a slight amount that accounts for the extra bit of width needed by the cover when it folds at the edges of the spine. Again, commercial publishers will supply designers with the exact amount of the turn, but in our example let’s assume that we need to add 1/8″ to both spine edges. This means we need to go back once more to our Width field and add another plus sign (+) followed by the two 1/8″ turns—totaling ¼”, or 0.25″ when expressed in inches decimal. Still with me? I know this sounds hard at first, but after you’ve done a few covers you’ll find it easy. (If not, you might be a good candidate for one of the automated book cover plug-ins mentioned at the end of this article.) Our total width is now 10.875 inches. Next is the Height measurement. This one is easy. The height is 7 inches. Done. Now set Columns to 2. Set Gutter to 0.625 inches. Why 0.625? Because 0.625 is the width of our spine. Get it? Margins don’t matter much, but for now let’s use 0.125 inches. Next up is Bleed and Slug. Bleed is important if any artwork extends to the edges of the cover. If so, you’ll need to add extra beyond the trim size in case anything slips a hair during the trimming process. Again, I use 0.125 inches (or 9 pts or 5 mm) for my Bleed setting all around. Warning: These measurements are typical throughout the printing industry, but if your printer gives you different specifications, build your bleed to those settings instead. The last setting is Slug. The slug is the area beyond the trim and bleed that doesn’t print. Let’s set the Slug to 1 inch on all sides, and you can use this area to print information about your project. If you’re still with me, all our values are in place, so it’s time to click OK (Figure 1).

Add Guides

The next step in setting up our file is adding a few guides to show the turn, or fold, areas. Start by going to View > Show Rulers. Double-click the cover page of your document. Next, drag two vertical rulers that snap to the sides of the spine (that is, the gutter lines separating the document’s left column from the right). When dragging your ruler guides, drag from outside the live page area to extend the ruler guides into the pasteboard, as seen in Figure 2.

Now select the leftmost guide. Notice in the Control panel that the x-value reading for the guide is 5.125 inches. As we already figured when setting up our document, our turn is 0.125 inches (or 1/8 inch). This means we need to copy this ruler guide and move it 0.125 inches to the left. To do this, insert your cursor in the X field after 5.125 and type –0.125, subtracting from the x value to move it to your left (Figure 3). While holding the Option (Mac OS) or Alt (Windows) button, tap Return or Enter. Notice how the original ruler guide has now been duplicated and placed 0.125 inch to the left of the original. The guide’s X value should read exactly 5 inches. Now do the same for the other ruler guide on the right edge of the spine. This time, highlight the guide, insert your cursor again in the X field after 5.75, and type + 0.125. Hold Option/Alt and tap Return or Enter. If you’ve followed along, you should now have a new ruler guide located at 5.875 in. on the X-axis (Figure 4). The last step in this sequence is to select all your ruler guides and choose View > Grids & Guides > Lock Guides.

Drawing Fold Marks

The final step in setting up your document is to draw lines that show the printer where your cover folds at the spine. To draw these lines, use either the Line tool or the Pen tool. Start at the uppermost boundary of the slug area and draw a 1-point black line on top of the leftmost ruler guide (Figure 5).

Draw the vertical line downward until you hit the lower outside boundary of the slug area. Hold the Shift key when you draw the line to constrain the line to exactly 90°. With the line still selected, go to the Stroke panel and choose Type > Dashed (3 and 2), as seen in Figure 6. As I said, these lines are for the printer to know where to fold the cover, but of course we don’t want them to print. To make the line not print, choose Window > Output > Attributes and turn on Nonprinting. (If this field is grayed out, it’s because your line is no longer selected.) To confirm that your line is nonprinting, type W to toggle Preview mode, which will make invisible all objects set to Nonprinting. Once you’ve confirmed the nonprinting status of your dashed line, type W again to return to Normal mode. The last step in this process is to duplicate the nonprinting guide three more times and place these new lines on top of the other three ruler guides. Do this any way you please. I select the first dashed line, and then Option/Alt-drag out my three copies with the Selection tool. Once you’ve placed all four dashed lines, zoom in to at least 400% to confirm their exact placement on your mechanical (Figure 7). Before moving on, select all four vertical dashed lines, and choose Object > Lock.

Let the Fun Begin

Now that we’ve completed our book cover document, it’s time for the fun (or scary, depending upon your outlook) part: designing the front, back, and spine of your cover. But unlike the last stage of the process, where I can give you step-by-step instructions on how to set up your file, teaching designers how to design isn’t so easy. If it were, everyone would be a brilliant designer/pianist/ architect/dancer, etc.

So what makes a good book cover good?

Where do we begin? For starters, I find it helps to look at the work of others. Go to a bookstore (or any other type of store that sells books) and have a look around. Take mental notes about the covers you like and those you don’t. Another good place to look is on the internet. Try doing a search for “award winning book covers.” The amount of good work in this area of graphic design is astounding (and intimidating). The best advice is to make your cover unique. Boring, cookie-cutter covers become lost among the tidal wave of new books published every year. So how do you do so? Ever notice how people who speak in a flat monotone get less attention than those who tend to whisper or shout? Try applying the same principles to design. Use colors that shout when shouting is what you’re looking for. Likewise, use colors that whisper when whispering makes sense. The same goes for images and type. Sometimes a simple white page with one small image or line of text speaks louder than a splashy collage with large, menacing type. Yet today, with computers, we designers can experiment with all kinds of fonts and images. All it takes is a little time and the willingness to fail. Let’s take a look at an example. A few years ago a publisher asked me to work up some cover ideas for a series of famous mystery books they intended to reprint. Among them was Dashiell Hammett’s legendary The Thin Man. I’d never read the book, but did a little research to learn what it was about. I discovered that the book was a stylish and sophisticated murder mystery featuring husband-and-wife crime-stoppers Nick and Nora Charles. With that bit of information, I started to noodle around in Illustrator. I knew I wanted to play on the word thin, and that the cover should be dark and menacing. Then it came it me: What if the word thin were itself thin, and the characters of the word projected a long, eerie jail-like shadow? Too obvious? Perhaps. But the proof is in the execution of the idea, not so much the idea itself. Too often I’ve come up dry trying to overthink an idea. Sometimes simple is best. This cover is one such example (Figure 8).

Creating a Dust Jacket

Now that you understand the basics of creating a simple cover, let’s move on to creating another kind of book cover: the dust jacket. Dust jackets usually cover hardcover books. The major difference is that dust jackets have flaps that vary from narrow to wide. Often, better quality softbound books include what are called French flaps. Here the cover looks like a dust jacket, with flaps that fold at the front and back cover. Besides allowing for more copy, french flaps create a more attractive book, with the edge showing a discernible front and back cover. Laying out a dust jacket or cover with French flaps is a bit more complicated, but more interesting to design because of the cover’s increased width and use of flap copy. Here’s how. Once again we begin by choosing File > New > New Document. Again we deselect Facing Pages and Primary Text Frame and enable Preview. Click in the Width field. Our jacket is 8½ × 11 inches. Our flaps are 4 inches and the spine is 3/4 inch, so, to let InDesign figure it out in the New Document panel, go to Units and select Inches. Now, type 8.5+8.5+.75+4+4+.25. When you tab to the Height field, the Width should change to read 26 inches. Make the Height 11 inches. Move to the Columns field, and type 2. The gutter is 0.75 inches. We’ll use the Margins setting to define the flaps. This time, make the top and bottom margins 0 inches and both the left and right margins 4 inches. Add the same bleed and slug values we used before (0.125 on all four sides; slug is 1 inch all around). Click OK. Your document should look like Figure 9.

Use the technique outlined in the book cover directions for adding fold lines (or turn) at the spine and flaps. Now your mechanical should look like the layout in Figure 10. Remember to make the dashed fold lines nonprinting. Place your front and back panel artwork. Tip: You can place your art on your default Layer 1, or if you prefer, you can create a new Art layer and place your art and text on that. You can either use separate art for each panel, or use one image or graphic to wrap completely from front to back. For the flaps, I recommend all flap copy be placed against either a solid-colored background or, if an image is used, that the image be treated so that text legibility isn’t a problem. Regardless of which technique you use, once you flow your flap copy into an empty text frame, use Inset Spacing (Object > Text Frame Options) to control the placement of the text within the frame. This way, all you have to do is make the text frame the same size as your flap plus bleed. There’s no need to drag ruler guides to define where your text goes. If you do decide to use just a solid color for the flap backgrounds, simply fill the text frames with that color. Figure 11 shows what your flaps should look like. Note that the text frame inset values are the same on all sides except for the side closest to the front or back covers (that is, the side without the bleed).

Designing the Spine

A book’s spine is an important element of the dust jacket. From a design perspective, the spine can be a bit tricky because of its long and narrow shape. But despite its limitations, I’ve seen many interesting designs used on spines. Start by making a text frame that’s the same size as your spine, including the top and bottom bleeds. Rotate the frame –90° (270°) so you can read it horizontally. Insert your cursor, and type the book’s title. Choose Object > Text Frame Options and in the Vertical Justification section, in the Align field, select Center. Depending on how you typed the title and which font you used, you may notice that the title is not centered exactly vertically in the frame. Chances are you’ll notice a little more space beneath the title than above. To remedy this problem, select the Baseline Options tab in the Text Frame Options dialog box. By default, InDesign sets the first baseline offset of a frame to Ascent. This means that when justifying vertically, your text is in fact centered, but to the title’s ascenders. The ascenders are those characters that are a bit taller than the font’s capitals. Lowercase h, l, and k are good examples of characters with tall ascenders. Yes, InDesign has vertically centered your text, but to your eye it looks off. For this reason I always set the First Baseline Offset to Cap Height (Figure 12). Notice how your text moves downward a touch, and now feels centered vertically.

From here, continue to add the author’s name, the publisher, and any other graphics to the spine. Depending on your design, these finals elements may need to be in separate text or graphic frames. Tip: You can also go to the Pages panel menu and select Pages Attributes > Rotate Spread View > 90° CCW. This does not physically change your document; it’s the equivalent of turning the whole page to get a better view. You can easily edit the spine on the page exactly where it will be.

Back Copy and Barcode

Use Text Frame Options with appropriate inset spacing for the copy that goes on the back cover. Remember to leave enough room on the left and right sides so that the back copy doesn’t get too close to the book edges, like on the flaps. If you have a barcode, you should now add that to the back cover. Usually it goes below the back copy, surrounded by a white box (Figure 13).

Your publisher should provide you with the proper barcode and any requirements for its use. If self-publishing, spend some time in a bookstore and see how other designers have handled the barcode. Your printer should be able to provide you with guidance.

Finishing Up

When you’ve placed everything on your dust jacket, create a PDF for you and your client to review. If you’ve created your cover using multiple pages, be sure to choose Spreads instead of Pages in the PDF dialog box (Figure 14).

You might also want to send a draft copy to your printer, so that they can check your mechanical as well. If you need to make changes, make them in the original InDesign document and then generate a revised PDF. Your PDF settings will vary depending on who prints your jacket and how. Once again, don’t guess at these settings—speak to your printer and insist that they give you guidelines or even a PDF Preset to load into InDesign and use. As I said at the beginning of this article, if you find yourself designing lots of jackets, you might want to invest in one of the plug-ins mentioned in “More Cover Resources” to automate the process. But if you only design an occasional cover or jacket, it’s easy enough to do—impressively—using the steps I’ve outlined above.