I have a companion book on my @VictoriaKaer profile with writing tips. This book will cover some basic elements of cover design as well as some dos and don'ts of design. I also have information about requesting from a designer here on Wattpad.
I ce...
This chapter isn't a tutorial, it's more of a "if you put your mind to it, you can do it" pep talk.
One of the things I love to do as a designer is to take something that is everyday and ordinary and turn it into something completely different.
It takes practice, a lot of trial and error, and a heap of patience. Things don't always work out and I've trashed a lot of designs that didn't cut it, but the point is, I tried. That's the key, you will never improve or test your limits if you don't try. If you're afraid to fail then you'll never move forward with your design work. I've been designing for more than ten years now. I wasn't magically decent at it. If I could find some of my original work I'd show you, but through the years things got lost as I moved from one laptop to another (they maaaay have gotten lost on purpose, just saying that they were that bad).
So find random images and see what you can make with them. Don't force it, let your imagination run wild and see what happens. A lot of my best designs came from the thought of, let's see what we can make with this.
The image below on the left was found on Unsplash and my brain went, "psst, favorite that we can do something with it". I did and it sat there for a while and every time I saw it my brain would poke me and urge me to do something with it. Eventually, I gave in and the cover on the right was the result.
The image was sweet and beautiful showing off the new life growing ... I went the opposite direction. Turning something from one thing to another is a challenge. Practice, and play around with layers and effects to get the look you want.
Creating the final cover image took fifteen layers, and those are only the image layers I'm not including all the adjustment layers that I used.
As I said, time and patience. And lots of practice.
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This is another one I did a bit ago. This cover is actually a premade meant for publication. You can see a lot of my design work tends toward the darker side of things.
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You can see this one isn't as dramatic a change as the other two designs I showed you but I took it from a simple rainy window to something more. It's a very simple manip but effective nonetheless.
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Get out there, design and have fun! Don't stress yourself out with comparisons to other designers. Take your time, learn all that you can, and you'll get to the level you want to be at. Listen to criticism, take in what you're told, and then look seriously at the critiqued graphic and see if you can see what the viewer saw when they looked at it. You may like your end result, but if you can't see why someone else may not like it then it will be impossible for you to move forward.
Accept the praise and the criticism alike and learn from all of it.
