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Publishing Archives.
Writing and Publishing, Part 32:
Becoming your own publisher:
Design and Manufacturing Techniques Continued:
Cover Design and Layout Part2:
Last week, I discussed cover design. Now I want to get into the
actual layout of the cover. This involves the use of our page
layout program and requires very close coordination with our book
manufacturer. There are a number of critical details which can
enhance or ruin our cover.
We have already gone over the basic techniques of layout in our discussions on laying out the parts of the book. We import information from our word processor and graphics programs and place them within the book to make a pleasing and logical document.
The big difference for our cover will be in dealing with color. I have never created a book where I did not want some color on the cover. In fact, in most cases, I will opt for what is called the four color process. In my first two books, I went cheap and used spot colors. I later wished I had not done that. To me, the savings was not worth the difference in the sense of quality which we get from a good four color cover.
I do not intend to write a tutorial about color concepts and processes. My goal is to explain what I do know from my own experience, first about the four color process. I have covered some of this previously. Now we will look at it from the perspective of creating good covers for our books.
The basic idea in process color is that a printing press creates all of the colors we see on a printed page from just four basic colors. The color model used in the printing industry is the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black (CMYK) model. This is different than the model used in your monitor and television screens, which is the Red, Green, Blue (RGB) model.
For the printing press to print a colored page, it must print the same page four separate times; one time for each of the inks required. In practice, this is often done in a single pass on what is called a four color press. As one ink overprints the previous ink we will get the combination color of the current and previous inks. The final result will be a full color cover.
There are some other ways that color can be managed in the printing process. In addition to the four color model, we can have what are called spot colors. In the simplest form, we may want to have a cover with black ink for some of the text and, perhaps, some shade of red or blue to emphasize some text. Thus, we could have a two, three or four color cover or page for our book. Just as in the four color model, each ink would be printed separately.
Spot colors are created by making premixed combinations of the four basic (CMYK) colors. These standard inks are used by most folks in the publishing industry. They are defined by a company called Pantone. Pantone defines the colors and gives them a reference number which will mean the same color no matter who uses it.
For example, the Wesoomi logo, when we have it printed, is printed as Pantone Matching System (PMS) 286. PMS 286 is the reference number for a particular shade of blue which I happen to like. Assuming the paper used is the same, 286 will be the same color no matter who prints it.
About the paper, its color will affect the final color we actually see when the page is printed. You only have to mess with your crayons and colored art paper a bit to realize this. Especially for our cover, we will want a very white, very hard paper. This is one of the things we must work out with our book manufacturer.
Much of this color handling process has been enhanced by the development of two, four, and even six color presses. In these machines, there will be stages which can print different colors. This allows the printer to create a page or cover with several colors in just one pass through the printer.
For the printing press to do this, it must have separate printing plates to print each basic color, and only that color. For the four color process, there will be four separate printing plates used. By backing up through our prepress process, we will find that, somewhere, we will need to create four separate files to make these plates. Sure enough, they are called color separation files. They will be either Postscript (ps) files or Portable Document Format (pdf) files.
Thank goodness, this is not something we must figure out how to do. I know that PageMaker can create color separation files for us. We must simply tell it which color to separate and make sure to name the file appropriately. I'm sure that the other page layout programs can do the same.
In practice, this is one function which I pass on to the book manufacturing firm. I give them the PageMaker application file for my cover. I expect then to use their vast experience to do this touchy part for me. Once the files are created, the plate making process is the same as for any other plates.
Another layout parameter for our cover is what is called a bleed. Very simply, this means that the graphic goes all of the way to the edge of the page. To make sure this happens we actually run the graphic past the edge of our defined page. Then, even if the trim is not exact, there will be no white showing at the edge. In practice, a bleed will extend 1/8" beyond the edge of the page trim size.
One other thing which may occur is a situation where you have a color break. That is, two different colors adjacent, but not overlapping. This can happen when you are using spot colors. You do not want one color to overprint the other color to produce a third, unexpected color. Neither do you want a white space between the colors. The printer can handle this with a technique called trapping. I do not pretend to understand how it's done. The only point is, if you have such a situation, make sure your manufacturer knows what you want. I have never had such a situation, but I'm sure it would not be a free service.
One of the things which makes cover layout difficult, is that all of the elements are on a single page. The front back and spine are laid out and printed together as a single sheet. On a dust jacket, the flaps are also part of this single page. A diagram for a 8&1/2 by 11, hard cover book might look like this. This is the cloth book cover, not the dust jacket, although the situation would be similar.
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Notice that there is a 3/4 inch wrap allowance. This is the cloth which is wrapped over the edges of the hard boards and glued to the inside of the boards. The end sheets of the book are then glued over the board to give a nice inside appearance. These inside end sheets can be plain paper or they can have print and graphics on them. The other thing to notice is that the spine print area is larger than the spine bulk. This is because we add the thickness of the cover boards to the bulk. Look at a hardbound book to better understand this.
About the spine bulk, this is determined by the type of paper we use and the page count of our book. When paper is specified, by the paper manufacturer, pages per inch (PPI) is one of the parameters which will be specified. It is then a simple matter to compute the spine bulk (thickness of the inside book) using simple arithmetic. This spine area is important, because, as I said previously, it's the only part of your book likely to be seen.
These diagrams for the cover layout can be provided to us by the book manufacturer. Notice that these are only sketches. It is up to us to accurately lay the page out in our page layout program. One that is done we can import and place our cover elements just as we would in any other layout.
Here is a greyscale reduction of the actual cover of our book "Supreme Commander George. The actual cover was done in four color process. Notice the bleed on the lower right and right bottom of the cover where the graphic extends 1/8" past the crop mark. Those little lines on the corners are called printers marks as are the little bulls-eyes. They can be used by the printer for alignment and trim.
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Notice that the spine information is rotated 90 degrees clockwise. There are various techniques for putting information on the spine. An alternative to what I did would be to use stacked characters. In this cover, I used PMS 286 (blue) for my logos and PMS 349 (green) for my title and author's name. I hope that these will stand out from the hard white background and draw attention.
Next time, I will discuss our book manufacturer's role in this
process.
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