Design a Hardback Cover for a Young Adult Fiction Book in Adobe InDesign
Young Adult Fiction is an ever-growing sector of the publishing industry, and a popular genre for self-publishers. Grown-up novels for teens need cover designs that bridge the gap between childish and mature, while exploring themes of emotional angst, growing up, relationships, family and school. Design elements can be put together to convey the mood and message of the book, as well as to directly appeal to a potential reader.
Here, we’ll look at how handwritten typography, papery collage-inspired textures and strong color combinations can be combined to create an attractive cover design. We’ll explore how you can create a genre-appropriate design using the typefaces, tools and techniques available to you in Adobe InDesign. We’ll also hop over to Adobe Illustrator to create a simple vector image.
In this tutorial we’ll be creating a design for a hardback dust jacket, with flaps that allow the jacket to fold over the hardcover.
Step 1
Open InDesign and select New Document from the Welcome window, or go to File > New > Document.
In the New Document window set the Intent to Print, No. of Pages to 2 and uncheck Facing Pages. From the Page Size drop-down menu select Custom… to open the Custom Page Size window.
Set the Width to 138 mm and Height to 216 mm. Type ‘Demy Hardback’ into the Name text box and click Add, and then OK.
Read full lesson here: Design a Hardback Cover for a Young Adult Fiction Book in Adobe InDesign