From the course: Designing a Book Cover

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Choosing typefaces

Choosing typefaces

In creating this, the second design for Homage to Catalonia, using what I have referred to as the Big Book Look. The Big Book Look is a term I borrowed from Steven Heller and Louise Fili from their book Stylepedia, meaning big type for the title and big type for the author. Combined in this case with a symbolic piece of imagery, this representing a trench in which they fought and the red flag atop that trench and behind the trench a sunrise. There is a passage in the book where Orwell talks about watching the sunrise behind the trenches. While I don't want to give you an English lit class, because that's not why you are here for, the point I want to make here is that if you can incorporate some salient detail like this in your book cover design, then it's going to be the stronger for it. In this discussion, I want to bring out three points and the first of these is an approach to choosing type. The second is how I created this simple illustration, and the third is working with the…

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