Don’t worry if you don’t have InDesign or are unfamiliar with it; you can still make a book cover with Adobe Illustrator, and there’s really greater creative freedom there.
Don’t stress about the layouts or pages; Illustrator can manage two pages of book cover design. If you already have a template, you may relax even more.
You’ll discover how to design a book cover using a template and produce one on your own in this lesson.
Knowing the book’s size is necessary before creating the cover. Unsure of the appropriate book size? I conducted the research and compiled a brief summary of a few common book sizes, sometimes known as “trim sizes” in the publishing industry.
Standard Book Sizes
Different sizes exist for paperback books, pocketbooks, children’s books, comics, and other types of publications, depending on the sort of book you’re creating a cover for.
Typical paperback book dimensions include:
- 5 inches x 8 inches
- 5.25 inches x 8 inches
- 5.5 inches x 8.5 inches
- 6 inches x 9 inches
- 4.25 inches x 6.87 inches (pocketbook)
Numerous children’s books come in a variety of popular sizes:
- 7.5 inches x 7.5 inches
- 10 inches x 8 inches
- 7 inches x 10 inches
The cover size of a hardcover book will be somewhat larger than the book pages if you’re designing for one. Here are the three typical hardcover dimensions:
- 6 inches x 9 inches
- 7 inches x 10 inches
- 9.5 inches x 12 inches
Identify the book size? Let’s use Adobe Illustrator to create a book cover now.
Making a Book Cover in Adobe Illustrator: 2 Methods
In Adobe Illustrator, you may create your own book cover designs or modify pre-made ones. It goes without saying that using a template is simpler, especially if you’re a beginner, but if you can’t find the perfect design, making your own is a superior alternative.
Everything relies on the kind of books whose covers you’re creating. Anyway, I’ll walk you through the fundamental processes of both approaches so you may choose which to employ.
Note: Screenshots were obtained from the Mac version of Adobe Illustrator CC. The appearance of Windows or other versions may vary.
Method 1: Use a template for a book cover
It’s easy to use a pre-made template. However, Adobe Illustrator only offers one readily usable book template. Even though this template might not be the finest, I’ll teach you how to utilize it and you can use the same technique to any designs you download.
1. Open Adobe Illustrator and start a new project. Select Print templates and choose the Surreal Activity Book book template. Decide on that alternative, switch the measurement unit to inches, and click Create.
Go to File > New from Template and choose your Illustrator template file if you’re using a downloaded template.
You may discover a lot of alternative book layouts on Adobe Stock if this one isn’t what you’re searching for. Your Adobe Creative Cloud plan does not include Adobe Stock, but you may use its 30-day free trial to get up to 10 free designs.
When you desperately need to finish a book cover design but are unsure where to begin, I believe it is absolutely worthwhile to give it a shot. In addition, if after the 30-day trial period you decide you no longer need or want to utilize the membership, you can cancel it.
2. Locate or substitute the missing fonts. The majority of the time, missing fonts occur because your computer might not be set up with the template fonts.
Since most fonts used in templates from Adobe Stock are Adobe Fonts, activating them is as easy as clicking a button. Otherwise, select Replace Fonts to use your installed fonts in lieu of the missing ones.
The book template will open when you activate or change the typefaces. You can view the front and back covers on the first two artboards.
3. Change the book’s cover. The artboards (pages) that you don’t need can be deleted, and you can alter any element on this template.
As an illustration, you might start by renaming the book. You can edit the text by just selecting it.
The book cover’s other components, such as color, form, and deletion, may then be changed until it achieves the desired outcome.
Recommendation: If you decide to utilize a template, it’s critical to pick one that resembles your perfect book cover because you will only need to make a few changes. If not, it would be better to start from scratch with a fresh design.
Method 2 : Use Adobe Illustrator to create a book cover
Simply make artwork that appropriately fits the size of the book once you know it. The only challenging aspect is determining the proper distance between the front and rear pages because it is difficult to determine the thickness of the book.
To make a book cover from scratch in Adobe Illustrator, follow these steps:
1.start a new document and enter the dimensions for your book cover. For instance, I’m creating the cover for a kid’s book, so I’ll enter 7.5 for width and 7.5 for height, raise the Artboards number to 2, and select Inches as the unit.
Since this is a print-ready file, make sure the color mode is set to CMYK.
Once you click Create, two artboards will appear in the new document, representing the front and back covers of the book.
You must include an additional artboard for the binding and spine if the book is thicker or a hardcover (spacing between the front and back cover). While the width should be determined based on the number of pages in your book, the height should match the size of the cover.
One of the original artboards, for instance, was moved, a new artboard was put in the middle, and the artboard dimension was adjusted to 0.5 inches by 7.5 inches.
The next step is to develop the design once the artboard has been set up.
2.Fill in the blanks on your book cover with text and photographs. Adding images, making graphics or sketches, or just using typography as the design feature of your cover are all options depending on the sort of book you’re designing the cover for.
The simplest scenario is using photographs as the cover since all you need to do is pick stock photos and add text (the book’s title).
In my experience, the cover of a children’s book typically consists of graphics or images.
3. Once your design is complete, you may package your file and submit it to your publisher or customer.
Keeping Your Book Cover for Print
The next step after using either technique 1 or method 2 to create the book cover is to save your.ai file as a PDF and package the file in case the print company has to make any changes.
Because you can only package an.ai file when the file is saved, go to the overhead menu File > Save As to save the file before packing it.
No longer does it matter if you package the file first and save a PDF copy afterwards.
Select the Adobe PDF (pdf) file format under File > Save As.
You may select the PDF setting by clicking save. However, I often save the PDF as High Quality Print even though some book publishers need PDF/X-4:2008.
When you save a file as PDF/X-4:2008, this option is unavailable, but when you save it as High Quality Print, it permits others to modify the file if the Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities option is enabled.
Click Save PDF after making your changes.
The file may be packaged by selecting File > Package. After choose where to save the package folder, click Package.
The PDF file may be inserted into the package folder, and the whole thing can be sent to the printer at once.
