Graphic Design Basics For Writers

A word smith’s beginner’s guide to art and design

Writers have to do more than write. In this increasingly digital world, that often includes some graphic design. Maybe it’s for making your own book covers. But even if not going down the self-publishing route, it could be for pitch contests online, website banners, marketing graphics, and a whole host of other visual material needed in online spaces.

Imagery

If you are a visual artist, you probably don’t need to be here. For those who aren’t drawing, painting, or whatever-ing portraits of your original characters… you’re likely going to rely on a lot of free for commercial use imagery (or images you pay a license for) instead. Canva, Pixabay, Unsplash, and many, many more. You can move these images to your preferred editing software — i.e. you are not just stuck with what Canva has if you are using Canva as your design tool. 


If you are integrating multiple images, you are going to want them to be the same type. All photos. All cartoon imagery. All watercolor style. Yes, these can be mixed theoretically… if you have the eye for it. If you don’t, stay with one type. 

(Quick note — Make sure you have the proper license to use whatever image you’re using, especially for book covers, because that crosses into commercial use.)

Colors

Pick a color scheme. It doesn’t have to be a fully developed brand package. Don’t over-complicate it. But having a simple color scheme can help things look cohesive, deliberate, and aesthetically pleasing, even when they are disparate elements you are putting together. 

For one mood board I created for an online pitch contest, I used three core colors: green, gray, and red. This was partially driven by symbolism and partially by practicality. Symbolism: green represented one character, gray represented another, and red represented love because it’s a romance. Practicality: One character is a botanist, so I need green for the plants. It’s also a Hades and Persephone retelling, so I needed pomegranate seeds in the design, so red it is. 

Having those colors, I was able to streamline picking images in that scope. Of course, you are not limited by the original image entirely. Putting colored filters over the images, I was able to get them closer to the same tone. 

When you add wording into the mix (more on font selection below), you add another layer of coloring — a contrasting color. This is pretty simple. If your background colors are light, you need a dark color like black, or near black shades like navy blue. If the background colors are dark, you need light colors like white, any shade of off-white, or bright yellow. 

High contrast is needed to be readable! Again, don’t over-complicate it. Go look at the books on your bookshelf right now. You’ll see most of the titles are in black, white/off-white, and yellow. Silver and gold embellished titles? That’s just fancy white and yellow. 

Don’t know where to start to pick a color palette? Research books in your genre. Dial into thinking about the connotations of different colors (bright colors equal happy, for example). 

Or… pull colors from the images you decide on using. Canva will automatically generate these color palettes for you, and every image editing software has a color select tool, where you can easily pull colors from any image itself.
FontsOnce upon a time I watched a video about book cover design and the instructor said that using only one font for everything looked amateur. On the flip side, I’ll add this — using too many mismatched fonts makes things look like a ransom note. 

What’s the graphically disinclined writer to do? Pick two. 

Which two? One — a fancier front for the titles or main headings. (If not fancy, then distinguished. Some genres call for a simple, striking sans serif typeface.) Two — a less fancy, more readable font for text boxes or fine print. 

New more variety than two? Remember that italics, bold, and title case can add visual variety while remaining cohesive. 
When selecting which fonts, remember that you aren’t just picking the coolest or most unique one you can find. Rather, many fonts reflect different genres. Research book covers in your genre and subgenre space (which is an easy internet search away) to get the vibe of the fonts used. Font choice, like book cover imagery and color palette, is a subtle but powerful way that conveys the genre and tone of your book to potential readers. 

There are other people who have written about this more in depth than I will go here:
Are You Using the Right Font on Your Book Cover
Publisher and book cover designer Jessica Bell gives tips on what font to use (or not use) on your book coverannerallen.com

Book Cover Typography: Fonts That Sell (& Fonts to Avoid) | Kindlepreneur
The right font can make or break your book cover. Discover the best fonts by genre, font psychology, layout tips, and…kindlepreneur.com

(While these are both about book covers, the principles can be applied to promo graphics and the like as well.) 

Two more font basics before we move on:

Avoid “default” fonts like Times New Roman or Calibri, or the default option is in whatever graphic design software you are using. It looks like you didn’t even bother trying.

Avoid “corny” fonts that have earned mockery like Comic Sans and Papyrus. Maybe someone can rescue them with good design, but if you’re reading this, probably not you. 

Readability

Readability is king over all. If the end product of your design isn’t readable, then it isn’t doing its job, and it might as well not even exist. 

If the font choice you use is to quirky that you have to spend a few moments deciphering it — that’s not readable. 

If the color contrast makes the words blend into the background — that’s not readable. 

If the image is cut off, or covered up, or zoomed in in some what that makes it incomprehensible — that’s not readable. (Not talking about deliberately abstract covers here.)

There’s another layer to readability, which is the fact that most will be viewing your graphic designs on a screen. Meaning you do not have complete control over how the person on the other side will see it. Is their screen bright, or set low, or adjusted to remove blue light (and thus look sepia-toned), or even turned to grayscale? 

Some of your design nuances could be lost in all that, but if you’ve followed the basic design principles like contrast, it should still be readable. 

Another aspect of seeing graphics on a screen — you don’t have control over the size it will be. Are they looking on a wide computer screen or on their phone? Furthermore, most images are going to be first seen in a smaller, thumbnail version of itself. This has affected how book covers are designed.

This means often means clearer, bigger text and less busy designs with more defined elements. Readability doesn’t just mean it can be read when the colors are tweaked, but when the size is changed. 

Stress test your designs in these ways. Zoom out to make it small. Does it still look good? Turn the whole design to grayscale. Is it still readable? (If you’ve chosen properly contrasting colors for the text from the background, it should be.) 

The Short Of It

I have enough of an eye for art and graphic design to know when something looks bad. I also have enough of an eye to understand my own limitations. If you are less artistically inclined, understanding some basic principles will help you make something that is at least passable to even good to even eye-catching. 

***
Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to my newsletter for exclusive posts and author updates — and get my free ebook The Short of It: A Practical Guide to Crafting and Publishing Short Stories as a welcome gift.