cover design plays an important role in the overall design of a book. When books meet readers, the first round depends on the cover. 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, we should establish the form of expression to serve the content of the book, and use the most touching, vivid and visually acceptable form of expression, so the design of the cover is very important. We should fully understand the connotation, style and genre of the manuscript, so as to achieve novel, relevant and infectious ideas. The process and method of conception can be roughly as follows:
1. Imagination:
Imagination is the basic point of conception, and it can produce a clear and meaningful image centered on the perception of modeling. What we call inspiration, that is, the accumulation and crystallization of knowledge and imagination, is a source of enlightenment to design ideas.
2. Abandonment:
The process of conceiving is often "easy to superimpose, but difficult to abandon". When conceiving, you often think a lot and pile up a lot, and you can't bear to give up the extra details. Mr. Zhang Guangyu said that "do more subtraction and less addition" is a real experience. For unimportant, dispensable images and details, resolutely reluctantly give up what one favours.
3. Symbolism:
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. Explore and innovate:
Popular forms, common techniques and cliché s 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, printed fonts are used in the cover text, so here I mainly introduce the font of the title. Fonts commonly used in book titles are divided into three categories: calligraphy, art and printing.
1. Calligraphy style:
Calligraphy style pursues endless changes between strokes, which has strong artistic appeal, distinctive national characteristics and unique personality, and the handwriting is mostly from the hands of celebrities, which has celebrity effect and is widely loved. For example, books and periodicals such as Seeking Truth and Doll Pictorial all use calligraphy as the font of book titles.
2. Art style:
Art style can be divided into regular art style and irregular art style. The former, as the mainstream of fine arts, emphasizes the regularity of appearance and the unity of dot-and-dash changes, which is easy to read and design, but rather dull. Irregular art is different in this respect. It emphasizes free deformation, pursues irregular changes in both stippling and font shape, and 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 kind of font, such as bosom friend and NEWYORK abroad.
3. Print style:
Print style has followed the characteristics of regular art style, and the early print style was dull and stiff. Now print style has made a breakthrough in this respect, absorbing the changing rules of irregular art style, greatly enriching the expressive force of print style, and making the printing style convenient and rich with the help of computers, making up for its lack of personality. For example, Yilin, TIME and other publications all use print as the font of book titles.
Some domestic books and periodicals combine Chinese and English titles in their design to form a unique decorative effect. For example, World Knowledge Illustrated uses the combination of "W" and Chinese title to form its own style. The visual image of a journal name is not always expressed by a single font, color and font size. It will be refreshing to combine more than two fonts, colors and font sizes. For example, the title of "Romantic Generation" combines calligraphy and printing together, which makes the two fonts with different appearance characteristics have a strong contrast effect. Another example is "Love, Marriage and Family" magazine's title is arranged in two font sizes and two colors, and the small characters are stacked with large characters, which combines the changes of levels and is quite distinctive.
Third, the picture design of the cover:
The picture of the cover has become an important part of the design elements because of its intuitive, clear, strong visual impact and easy to resonate 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 popular aesthetics. Usually, pictures of popular movie stars and models are selected as the covers. 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 sports stars and pictures of competitive scenes; News magazines choose news figures and related scenes, and its standard is neither young and beautiful nor scientific knowledge, but news value; The cover of photography and art publications should choose excellent photography and 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 eye-catching 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 it is advisable to configure the intermediate colors with each other, so that the contrast colors can be unified in coordination. The color of the book title should have a certain weight on the cover, and if the purity is not enough, it will not produce a remarkable effect. In addition, in addition to painting colors used for the cover, decorative colors can also be used. The cover color of literary books may not be 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 and not use it metaphysically.
Generally speaking, the colors of children's publications should be designed according to the delicate, simple, innocent and lovely characteristics of children, and the colors are often treated as high-profile, which weakens the intensity of various contrasts and emphasizes the soft feeling; The color tone of women's books and periodicals can be selected according to the characteristics of women, which is gentle, charming and elegant. The color of sports magazines emphasizes stimulation, contrast and the pursuit of color impact; The color of art magazines requires rich connotation and depth, and should not 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.
besides coordination, we should also pay attention to the contrast of colors, including hue, purity and lightness. If there is no contrast between warm and cold hues on the cover, you will feel lifeless; If there is no contrast between lightness and depth on the cover, you will feel dull and breathless; If there is no sharp contrast in purity on the cover, you will feel archaic and vulgar. We should grasp the relationship among lightness, purity and hue in cover color design, and at the same time use these three relationships to understand and find out the reasons for the disadvantages on the cover in order to improve color cultivation.
above, I talked about the design method of 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 dogmatically applied, but must be targeted, so as to design excellent book covers and make readers fall in love at first sight.