Cover design plays an important role in the overall design of a book. When the book meets the reader, the cover will be seen in the first round. The cover is the face of a book, a silent salesman. A good cover design can not only attract readers and make them fall in love at first sight, but also be intriguing and fondle admiringly. The quality of cover design is of great significance to the social image of books. Therefore, as an art teacher in a vocational school, I made some preliminary discussions on the cover design of books. Cover design generally includes the title of the book, the name of the editor, the name of the publishing house, and the decorative image, color and composition that reflect the content, nature and genre of the book.
First, the design of the cover:
First of all, it is necessary to establish a form of expression that serves the content of the book, and use the most touching, vivid and visually acceptable form of expression. Therefore, the idea of the cover is very important. We should fully understand the connotation, style and genre of the manuscript, and be novel, relevant and infectious. The process and method of conception can be roughly as follows:
1, imagine:
Imagination is the basic point of conception. Imagination is centered on the perception of modeling and can produce clear and meaningful images. What we call inspiration, that is, the accumulation and crystallization of knowledge and imagination, is a source of inspiration for design ideas.
2. Give up:
The process of conception is often "easy to superimpose, but difficult to abandon". When conceiving, I often think a lot and pile up a lot, and I am reluctant to give up redundant details. Mr Zhang Guangyu said that "more subtraction and less addition" is a real experience. For unimportant, dispensable images and details, resolutely reluctantly give up what one favours.
3. Symbols:
Symbolism is the most effective language for artistic expression. It is acceptable for people to express abstract concepts or artistic conception with concrete images, or to express concrete things with abstract images.
4. Exploration and innovation:
Popular forms, common techniques and cliches should be avoided as much as possible; Familiar conception methods, common composition and habitual skills are the enemies of innovative conception. If the idea is novel, it needs to be unconventional and unconventional. To have innovative ideas, we must have a tireless spirit of exploration.
Second, the text design of the cover:
Except for the title, the cover text is printed, so here I mainly introduce the font of the title. Fonts commonly used in book titles can be divided into three categories: calligraphy, art and printing.
1, calligraphy style:
Calligraphy style pursues endless changes between strokes, strong artistic appeal, distinctive national characteristics, unique personality, handwriting mostly from the hands of celebrities, with celebrity effect, widely loved. For example, books and periodicals such as Qiushi and Doll Pictorial all use calligraphy as the font of the title.
2. Artistic style:
Art can be divided into regular art and irregular art. As the mainstream of fine arts, the former emphasizes the regularity of appearance and the unity of dotted changes, which is easy to read and design, but relatively dull. Irregular art is different in this respect. It emphasizes free deformation, and pursues irregular changes in both pointillism and glyphs. It has the characteristics of rich changes, outstanding personality, sufficient design space, strong adaptability and rich decoration. Compared with regular art style and calligraphy style, irregular art style has both individuality and adaptability, so many books and periodicals choose this font, such as bosom friend, NEWYORK abroad.
3. Print:
Printing follows the characteristics of conventional art forms, and the early printing forms are rigid and rigid. Now the printing form has made a breakthrough in this respect, absorbing the changing law of irregular art forms, greatly enriching the expressive force of the printing form, and making the printing form convenient and rich in processing methods with the help of computers, making up for their shortcomings in personality. For example, Yilin, Times and other publications all use print as the font of the title.
Some domestic books and periodicals combine Chinese and English titles in design to form a unique decorative effect. For example, World Knowledge Illustrated uses the combination of "W" and Chinese titles to form its own style. The visual image of periodical names is not always expressed by a single font, color and font size. Combining more than two fonts, colors and font sizes will be refreshing. For example, the title "Romantic Generation" combines calligraphy and printing, which makes two fonts with different appearance characteristics have a strong contrast effect. Another example is the title of Love, Marriage and Family magazine, which is arranged in two font sizes and two colors, and the small characters are superimposed with the big characters, which combines the changes of levels and is quite distinctive.
Third, the picture design of the cover:
The picture on the cover has become an important part of design elements because of its intuition, clarity, strong visual impact and easy resonance with readers. The content of pictures is rich and colorful, and the most common ones are people, animals, plants, natural scenery and the products of all human activities.
Picture is an important part of book cover design, which often occupies a large area in the picture and becomes the visual center, so picture design is particularly important. Generally, youth magazines and women's magazines are leisure books and periodicals, and their standard is mass aesthetics. Usually, photos of popular movie stars and models are chosen as the cover. The standard of selecting pictures for popular science publications is knowledge, and pictures related to nature and advanced scientific and technological achievements are often selected; Sports magazines choose pictures of sports stars and competitive scenes; News magazines choose news figures and related scenes, and their criteria are not young and beautiful, nor scientific knowledge, but news value; The cover of photographic art publications should choose excellent photographic art works, and its standard is artistic value.
Fourth, the color design of the cover:
The color treatment of the cover is the key to design. Proper color expression and artistic treatment can produce striking effects in readers' vision. The use of color should consider the needs of content, and express different content and ideas with the effect of different color contrast. In contrast, it is advisable to seek unity and coordination, and to configure intermediate colors with each other to make the contrast colors harmonious and unified. The color of the book title should have a certain weight on the cover. If the purity is not enough, it will not have a significant effect. In addition, in addition to the painting color used for the cover, decorative colors can also be used. The cover color of literature books is not necessarily suitable for textbooks, and the cover color of textbooks and theoretical works is not suitable for children's books. We should treat the meaning of color dialectically, not use it metaphysically.
Generally speaking, the color of children's publications should be designed according to the characteristics of children's tenderness, simplicity, innocence and loveliness. Tones are often treated as high-key, weakening the intensity of various contrasts and emphasizing softness; The color tone of women's books and periodicals can be chosen according to the characteristics of women, which is gentle, charming and elegant. The color of sports magazines emphasizes stimulation and contrast, and pursues color impact; The color requirements of art magazines are rich in connotation and depth, and cannot be frivolous or kitsch; The color of popular science books and periodicals can emphasize mystery; The colors of fashion magazines should be trendy and full of personality; The colors of professional academic magazines should be dignified, serious and elegant, reflecting the sense of authority, and it is not appropriate to emphasize high-purity hue contrast.
In addition to coordination, we should also pay attention to color contrast, including hue, purity and lightness. If there is no contrast between cold and warm colors on the cover, you will feel lifeless; If there is no contrast between lightness and depth on the cover, it will feel dull and breathless; If there is no pure contrast on the cover, you will feel archaic and vulgar. Cover color design should grasp the relationship between lightness, purity and hue, and at the same time use the relationship between the three to understand and find out the reasons for the disadvantages on the cover, so as to improve color cultivation.
Above, I talked about the design method of the four basic elements of book cover design. Only by combining these elements in an orderly way can the book cover be formed. Mastering the basic methods of cover design must not be dogmatic, but must be targeted, so as to design excellent book covers and let readers fall in love at first sight.