As a professional (not a hobby graphic designer), I’ve seen many great book cover designs and many lesser quality ones. But keep this in mind, there is no bad work of art, because creativity is a blessing in itself and the outward expression of inner ideas even more so. But everyone’s eyes see and interpret what they see differently, so if this is true, observation could be biased depending on the individual’s mind’s eye.
Now, with this in mind, let’s justify art on the basis of marketability and toss the relevant conceptual expression to the wind for the sake of fair comparison.
When an author researches my scope of skills to create a project for their book, website, or any other type of print/web media work, they can only rely on my past experience, satisfied clients, and current projects that are available for them to view. . This is how it should be, however I try to tell my prospective employer that there are many other elements involved in creating and producing a satisfactory finished product that I use.
The main element that I strive to incorporate in all my projects is “personal conceptual expression”, not mine but that of the authors.
Feeding on that, as well as the personality of my author products/services, I use my professional and technical experience to customize the project to obtain the result expected by the author. This is just the draft phase!
Let’s say I’m doing a book cover design for a non-fiction title. And the book is about a clip, yes, that’s right, a “clip”.
The author wants to market and sell this book with an eye-catching and relevant cover to potentially sell many books. So I’m like, “What the hell can I do with a clip?“or I say, “Okay, let me find out from the author what vital role this clip has played in his life.”
Well, it just so happens that the author is blind in one eye and it was the result of an injury sustained as a child while in elementary school. There it is, my artistic juices are flowing. I can convey artwork such as Trauma, Emotions, Anger, Seeded Problems, etc… caused by the, “Paperclip”.
So I imagine, after talking and listening to my author, an image of a desk, an eyeball, a cane made from a clip, over and over again…
I can imagine forever. Which is an advantage in my business.
So how can I make it marketable? Well, I see several ways. I will search for clips associated with Trauma, Accident, School, Teachers… Then after research I will focus on a niche that is relevant to my visual representation and the content of the book. There are so many articles out there that have a pointless theme, but the story behind it is what sells. Evolving that text into a visual curiosity, well, that gives rise to marketability. This is just the concept art, naturally keywords, metadata and optimization have their main role in implementing marketing strategies.
Not all designers think the same, just as not all books read the same. But these are the basic conceptual techniques that I use in all my projects, not just in books.
More facts about book cover design