Designing a series of books comes with some different considerations to designing a standalone.
A book series is a brand and it needs to look cohesive and recognisable. If someone has read the first book, they need to be able to recognise Book 2 as belonging to the same series.
I like to know from the outset if I’m designing for a series, as this informs the way I design the first book. The more information I know about the rest of the series, the better. But, they don’t all have to be designed at once.
These are the main things I think about when designing a series:
1) Text
Are we using a font or utilising hand lettering? There are pros and cons to both.
Will it be easy to replicate this style of text on future covers? The whole set needs to work as a team.
Where will the author’s name and series name go? This usually needs to remain consistent across the series.
Will the typography style work for different lengths of titles and words? For instance, if the first book is called The Fae and the second is called The Fae Prince Who Fell Into the Human World and What He Found There, I’ll need to do quite a bit of work to make the two covers match.
How can I set up the spines so that the text matches? Or your readers might get angry that the books don’t match on their shelves.
2) Imagery
What imagery is being used? Do we have characters or symbols from the story on the cover?
What visual themes are used throughout the series? How can we extend that across the covers?
Can we replicate the way the imagery is used across the series? We might not use the same images, but we could use different ones in a similar way.
What images might we use on the subsequent covers? It’s useful to know about this sooner rather than later.
Are there things to leave off the first book so that we can use them on future covers? Again, this is good to know from the outset.
3) Colour
What colours suit the tone of the series? Are we going for jewel tones, bright colours, pastels, neutrals or something different?
Are there particular colours that suit one book over another?
Do we want all the books to have different colours, or keep them the same? Usually, each book will have a different colour, but that isn’t always the case.
What about the spines? How will they all look together?
The other question I get asked is: do you offer a discount if I hire you for the series? And the answer is YES! Designing the second, third, fourth, fifth (and beyond) takes fewer steps, as we already have a framework for the design. Because of this, I offer a discount after the first book cover in a series.
👉 Want to learn more? Head over to my CONTACT page to send me a message or book a call.
