Master the Art of Book Cover Design with Affinity Publisher

Creating the page that will eventually be the cover in its entirety. This is your foundation page as everything else is built on top of this.

Lesson 1. Setting up your initial cover page

Beginning to place your cover art requires a number of steps. Take your time, and don't hurry. It becomes easier as you go along.

You will notice the difference between the document version and this video version. That's perfectly ok, because you will be designing different book covers over time, and the principals remain the same regardless. This video cover uses a graphics method that splits the initial cover image first.

This section covers actually placing the image you are going to use for your cover onto the page.

Create An Eye-Catching eBook Cover with Affinity Publisher - Lesson 3 is the video version of the lesson, with slight differences that you will notice as you go through it.

You need to set the properties of the image at this stage so that it is the correct size for your selected image to fit the page properly.

Setting up the Gradient Slider to adjust the fill content

The actual video says Lesson 4, but in fact, it refers mostly to Lesson 5. There is no video for Lesson 4

Applying a transition, or gradient to the white layer previously set will give this image an air of mystery to some extent. It's almost a rule of thumb that a book cover is rarely if ever a plain unretouched image.

This video shows you how to take the image that has been placed on the right-hand side of the cover and duplicate it, and flip it so that it creates a mirror image on the cover.

Beginning with the first ellipse we start to set up the position of the title

Preparing the cover for the Title, Author and Tagline text containers

Adding a Radial Fill allows you to control the background of the area where you wish to place the Title Text

Setting up the semi-transparent ellipse (circle) to contain the Title on the front cover.

In this instance, I have a position for the Tagline in the top right-hand side. The cover needs to be uncluttered. The Title and the Tagline are really all you need. If you are a famous author, then, by all means, add your name. Otherwise, it belongs on the bottom of the cover in a "nothing special" font. Sutibally positioned against the background.

In this video version of the cover, we have a tagline ellipse on the top right of the cover, which is a smaller version of the main circle that contains the Title.