Book Cover Design

Working at a publisher for over eight years means that I had my hand in art directing and designing a little over 40 book covers. Unlike designing covers for fiction titles, which are often short and intriguing, the challenge with working on professional development book covers is that oftentimes the end user is more interested in the topic than they are the book cover. Titles and subtitles are standard in this industry, written with search engine optimization in mind. This is great for the educator, but for the designer it means that you have to consider how the cover will be read at thumbnail size in online stores, promo emails, and catalogs. Throw in four or five author names that also have to be included and space fills up quickly.

Lastly, how do you continue to present new cover concepts for the same handful of leadership topics?

See how I tackled these challenges in the samples below.