Resource Toolbox: Start Strong
Are you a writer who is curious about design? Get started here
It’s overwhelming, isn’t it? You Google one simple thing, like ‘how to get ideas for my book cover’ and you get so many links to Youtube videos and blogs and workshops that you want to quit before you’ve even started.
So where do you go first? Well, first you need inspiration. How can you learn what to create if you don’t have a good idea of what you want to create?
Getting an idea of what styles you like can point you in the right direction when looking for a good teacher or for practical advice. It’s time to do your research.
Below I’ve found 6 unique places you can go to get inspired.
This is the best and most thorough publication dedicated to book covers. The visual inspiration is varied and endless. Are you “highly enthusiastic about books,” too? Well, you are their target audience. They have a podcast too and they regularly interview authors, designers, and illustrators.
Part database, part gallery – The Book Cover Archive is a goldmine for design inspiration. You can sort by author and designer. Their taste in book covers tends to lean towards literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and biographies.
3: Cover Junkie
This blog is for magazine covers, but it can be used as an atypical source of inspiration when looking for bold new ideas for your future book covers. Covers are categorized by year and type (sexy covers, classic covers, award-winning covers, etc). There’s a healthy mix of illustration, photomanipulation, and text-only covers that are guaranteed to get your creative gears turning.
Under the “Design” tab on Epic Reads is where you’ll find blog posts showcasing the newest, trendiest book covers around. It’s also an excellent place to see what types of designs are getting big reveals and lots of hype. For the author looking for what’s hot, this is where you want to be.
PRINT is all about graphic design and they are always looking out for the next big thing – whether it’s new visual artists or new book cover trends. Start in the blog with their monthly book cover roundups and then venture out into other parts of their website to broaden your design horizons.
Probably not the first place you’d go looking for inspiration, but if you love the vintage look, The Library of Congress has a ton of free to use images that you can grab for your next vision board. There are photographs, posters, old timey illustrations, newspaper pages, and yes – books too.