Ebook cover design tutorial – Behind the scenes look at my Twitter book cover

I am very impressed by the work of Daniel C. Townson of Afterman Media. He created my blog header image and also the book cover for my Twitter Marketing ebook. I do not know much about design, but many bloggers have asked me about it, so I have Daniel to help explain his thoughts and the process behind the design of a cover for an e-book. Enjoy!

Twitter Marketing: Book Cover Design Tutorial

By Daniel C. Townson of Afterman Media

So, here’s a brief explanation of the concept and process behind the design of the Twitter Marketing: How to go Viral on Twitter eBook cover. It was a pretty quick design, using a couple basic image and text effects, but the end result works well for the subject – going viral on Twitter.

Importance of using a custom-designed ebook cover

Some people struggle with understanding the importance of using custom-designed eBook Cover. They figure that the look of the book isn’t nearly as important as the content, which is true to a certain extent. But there’s countless research out there that shows the effect an attention to marketing and design can have on the overall success of a given project.

For eBooks, and old-school printed physical books, the cover often sells the viewer before the content is even considered. While it’s true you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, a cover that catches your attention has already succeeded more than one that you just pass your eyes over. It makes you interested to see the content, it makes you actually pick the book up and read the flap.

And while just slapping a cool-looking graphic on the front may achieve this just as well as a carefully-designed, relevant to the content, cover does, the reader will appreciate the author of the book all that much more if the concepts of the content are well-illustrated on the front.

The concept of the ebook cover design

The goal of the eBook cover was to create a quick graphic that illustrated how one tweet can be spread exponentially, increasing exposure, leading to an increase in traffic/followers.

An easy representation of this is to use sketches or graphics of the (unofficial) Twitter bird, multiplied over and over. One lone bird was kept up front, in focus, to represent the initial Tweet. The title was then designed to represent a Tweet bubble, using a rounded-corners rectangle speech bubble. I did a few quick sketches of where I wanted to place the various elements, then turned straight to the computer to do the rest.

Gathering resources for the design

The first step to accomplishing this design was to gather resources. Really, all I needed was a Twitter bird and the Twitter logo, both of which are easy to find via the numerous design blogs out there – Smashing Mag, Minervity, etc.

These sites all provide quick, high-quality resources for designing just about anything. The Twitter bird I used took a little while to track down, but I eventually found it through Smashing Mag, in a collection of web icons called Praktica, by DryIcons. The Twitter logo I found at one of my favorite resource sites, Brandsoftheworld.com.

Using Illustrator

Once I had these two files, I opened Illustrator because I love laying out single-page PDF graphics in Illustrator. Some prefer Photoshop or InDesign, and I usually use a combination of programs to create designs and layouts, but try to stick to just one when possible.

For example, the background of repeating Twitter birds could have easily been done in PS, then flattened and placed into the illustrator file, or the text from Illustrator could have been imported into PS as a Smart Object. Or the whole thing could have been created in PS alone, but I used Illustrator to create, then PS to tweak the file size. Here’s the rundown of the steps and effects used:

• First is to build the background. I took the Twitter bird image, placed it in the document, and duplicated the row while changing the scale to get this effect:

• Next I placed a gradient rectangle, set to Overlay, over the pattern:

• This created a decent background for the cover, so next came the main Twitter bird and logo. I flipped the image and threw a slight Outer Glow around it to help it pop off the background a bit.

• This is looking pretty decent, so now onto the Tweet Title Box. Using the Pen Tool and the Rounded Rectangle Tool, I created this simple speech box graphic:

• To enhance it a bit, I threw a Drop Shadow behind it:

• Then I copied the shape, adjusted the stroke, and put an Inner Glow to give the box some definition:

• Place the two shapes together, and you get a decent-looking speech bubble/Tweet Box:

• So next is the type for the title. I don’t need to illustrate every single step I took to get the end effect, but I will explain: I used the font Colaborate, which I’ve been liking a lot lately. Clean, solid, with slight flairs that add a little uniqueness to it. After typing out the title and adjusting weights/sizes/kerning etc, I made a copy, put a 10pt stroke on it, with rounded corners, and Outlined the font, and then the stroke.

• Those steps gave me these two text graphics:

• Which I lined up and placed in the Tweet Bubble, along with a simple black line and the information on the author of the book, Marko Saric.

• Once this was all set, I simply placed it onto the cover, positioned so it looked as though the main Twitter bird was tweeting the title.

• This created the final image:

• Now, saving and formatting for the eBook was a bit of a process. Saving it as a PDF through Illustrator resulted in a file that was just too big for eBook. So I opened the PDF in Photoshop, reduced it to Screen resolution (72dpi), and saved it as a Photoshop PDF. I then opened both the cover PDF and the eBook PDF, switched out the title page in the eBook with the new cover graphic, and saved. Bingo.

Any design related questions for Daniel?

And there you have it, a quick little project that can be accomplished in maybe an hour, and works well for the end use. If anyone has any questions about certain steps, feel free to leave some comments, and I’ll answer them soon as I can. Thanks for reading!

By Daniel C. Townson of Afterman Media