CreateSpace Part Three; How to make a Book Cover (187 hits)
Step Three http://www.thecreativepenn.com • To insert a banner, go up to “insert,” click on “shapes,” and then select the rectangle. • Now we can drag out a rectangle. It’s OK if it’s not perfect, you can resize it and move it around. I’m going to double click on the rectangle to select it, go up to “Shape Outline” and hit “No Outline.” • I’ll do that again, go up to “Shape Fill” this time, and select the color black. Step Four • Now I can add some text. • I go back to “Insert” and hit “Text Box,” and choose “Draw Text Box” from near the bottom of the choices. • At first my text box has a solid white background. So I’ll double click on it, go up to “Shape Fill” and choose “No Fill.” The box also has a border I want to get rid of, so I double click on it again, go up to “Shape Outline” and pick “No Outline.” • But now if I type my title, I can’t see the black text… so I’ll highlight the text and go up to the “A” symbol to change the color. For now I’ll just pick white, then make the text a little bigger. • Rules for using fonts: • Using the right font for your book’s genre is important. • You can’t go wrong with some fonts. Here are some of my favorites: • Lato, open sans, liberation sans, English gothic, bebas neue, Optimus princeps, trajan pro, garamond, pandama, Shonar Bangla… here are some things to keep in mind: • Don’t use anything that comes with Windows – your basic fonts like Comic Sans, Times New Roman, or Mistral. • Try to use two fonts, something “cool” for the title, and something clean and simple for the author name (although if you want to create an author brand, you could reverse this, and make something memorable for the author name.) • Three fonts is OK if two are pretty simple (for example, to use in the tagline or review) • Don’t use more than one super creative, unusual font. • Search around. There are thousands of fonts. Find a great one. Understand that you may have to pay for it. • MS Word’s maximum font size is 72pt, but you can just type in a new number. • I’ve set mine to 120pt. I’m going to use a font called “Accidental Presidency.” It’s a narrow, bold, sans-serif font, similar to English Gothic or Bebas Neue. • But I want to space out the letters a bit, so we need to learn the very important skill of spacing letters. • I need to go up to the Home tab, and underneath the “Font” section I click on that tiny little diagonal arrow. • That’ll bring up a new “Font” window. Click on the “Advanced” tab to see the “Spacing” option. • You can set the text at “Expanded, Normal or Condensed.” • I choose Expanded, and set it at 1pt. That’s not as spaced as I want, so I do it again and choose “by: 3.5pt.” • I want to center my text, so I drag the walls of my text box to the edges of my cover, then click the center text icon. If it seems like the text isn’t lining up right, go up to the Paragraph section, hit the tiny diagonal arrow, and make sure the Indentation is set at zero. • Now I want to add an author name under the title. • But if I hit Enter/Return, the next line is too far down. I could try to fix the line height, by hitting the Paragraph options and setting the line-height to 0.8”, but too much and it will start cutting the top off the text. So the better option is to select my title text box, by clicking once on the border of the box, right click and choose “Copy Here” (or use the ctrl+”C” shortcut). • Now you have a duplicate text layer. Make the font size smaller, and increase the spacing. I set the size at 36pts, and the spacing to Expanded by 10pts. Accidental Presidency looks a little too bold, so I changed the font to Vodafone Rg. • Finally, I want my title text to “Pop” a bit more. If I click the little “A” symbol with the blue glow, I’ll get some special text features. If one of these styles doesn’t work, I can customize the Outline, Shadow, Reflection or Glow. • The “Reflections” is interesting, but only if I go to “More Reflection Options” and change the transparency a little. • But it’s not quite what I want. So instead, I’ll highlight the text and go up to the “A” with the white bar underneath to select the Font Color options. • Besides changing the color, I can also select a Gradient option. With a light border and subtle reflection, the cover looks pretty good.
