Micaela Alcaino: Book cover design

To kick off this year’s Baseline Shift sessions, we welcomed highly acclaimed book cover designer Micaela Alcaino.

 

A little on Micaela

Micaela started her journey at Penguin Random House and HarperCollins UK, before making the big shift in 2019 to freelance work. Alongside balancing up to thirty design projects at once, Micaela still makes time for archery, the gym, and spending time with her family and dog. It is no surprise that we received the comment “I want to be her” from one of our part two students.

Micaela Alcaino presentation personal slide
Micaela speaking about her personal and professional journey

Research

One of the key stages of her design process that Micaela focussed on, was the research stage. Our speaker goes above and beyond to ensure that she has immersed herself in the culture, traditions and artistic style that relates to the content of the book that she is designing for. When Micaela cannot visit a place or get access to tactile objects that relate to the book, she finds much of her inspiration through scouring Pinterest. It is important to note here that, instead of looking at other book covers for ideas, Micaela advocates for “seeking inspiration outside of your design sphere”.

 

Blank canvas

Starting with a blank canvas containing only the key information that will be included on the cover before tackling any of the actual ‘design’ elements, is something that many will have taken away from this talk. It was great to see Micaela posing the same questions here that are often asked on our course – “What is my hierarchy? What fonts work well for the genre? What are the important visual elements in the book?”.

Micaela Alcaino's presentation blank canvas slide
Micaela talking about starting with a blank canvas

Sketches

A lesson that Micaela has learnt herself and has now passed onto us is not to take first round sketches to the point of completion as it will become impossible to stay on track with your time management. The helpful restriction Micaela places on herself is to “treat the first-round sketches like a colouring book”. This way, the placement of colour can still be considered but does not need to be achieved at the early stages of design.

Micaela Alcaino's presentation sketches slide
Micaela speaking on her first round sketches

Revisions

Something that many of us resonated with in the talk is the emphasis on the first draft not being the final piece. We were shown a case study of Micaela’s cover design for ‘Ariadne’ which went through several stages of revision. Each iteration had the smallest of changes, and out of the seven revisions we were shown in the presentation, we were told that this was just a fraction! It’s great to see that iteration in the design process is not something only contained within education but is something that follows us into the real world of design.

Micaela Alcaino's presentation Ariadne slide
Micaela speaking on her revisions of Ariadne

The book as a 3D object

Something to remember when working with any project that involves a three-dimensional product, is to consider each visible face. Micaela highlighted the importance of spine design, describing it as “essential” to a successful cover. Some helpful advice was to consider how the user will interact with the product, for example most novels will end up at one point with their spine facing out on a bookshelf – hence why spine design is so crucial.

Micaela Alcaino's presentation spine slide
Micaela speaking on the importance of designing the spines of books

Real world advice

One of the highlights of the talk was the section on business, contracts, and networking. Micaela made it clear that whichever path of design you choose to follow, you must “READ YOUR CONTRACTS”. We were shown examples of ways in which employers can take advantage of designers if we do not take responsibility and look after our rights both as designers and individuals. Students wrote that “this is the kind of thing that you normally only find out when it’s too late” and “I never even considered that before this talk”. This is the reason that Baseline Shift exists – to allow students a look into what design is like in the real world and to cover topics and subjects that are beyond the scope of the syllabus. We are truly grateful to Micaela for giving this insightful talk and look forward to the next Baseline Shift session!

Micaela Alcaino's presentation contract slide
Micaela’s slide on approaching contracts

Our key takeaways! 

  • To track your favourite typefaces, you can create a spreadsheet categorising what each of your favourites is appropriate for. This also stops you overusing particular fonts.
  • If you work in print design, in Photoshop colour picker you can use cmd + shift+ y to grey out the colours that don’t print in CMYK.
  • Be online and be consistent across all platforms, maximising the use of the platform that is most relevant to your career.
  • Read your contracts and know your rights!
  • Especially important if you are freelance – Track your projects, and your expenses.
  • Apps like Speechify can help to streamline the process by reading out manuscripts / text files in the background while you work.

 

Useful links

Business

Wise – Digital bank that allows for accounts in multiple currencies – helpful for business across different countries.

FreeAgent – Tracks all your invoices and expenses (connects with Wise) – helpful for having multiple projects on at one time.

 

Cultural awareness

Creative review – Great place to learn what’s happening in the creative industry

Its Nice that – Great place to learn what’s happening in the creative industry

The Bookseller – All the latest news in Publishing UK

Creative Market – Great place to find cool new fonts, templates, graphics and more

Society of Young Publishers – Great place to learn from industry professionals and connect

Design Publishing Inclusivity – mentorship programme for under-represented creatives

 

– Written by Tommy Molnar

– Photography by Oscar Dudley

From Letters to Logos: The Elegance of Edited Type

Design ideas and design process.

Design idea 1

Monogram 01 (sophisticated)

This design takes inspiration from luxury brand monograms. I chose a serifed font, and through disconnected strokes, combined my initials ‘TM’. The simplicity and clarity makes this design very effective as a sophisticated logo.

 

Sketches of monogram

I began by sketching several variations of ‘TM’ monograms on paper, I find that using pencil and paper for this initial idea generation process allows for numerous quick generated designs that do not worry about being neat or technically perfect and instead focus on depicting the way in which the letters interact with one another or the feeling that they convey.

 

Screenshot of turning text into a vector image

Taking it into Illustrator, I started by typing a capital ‘T’ with the text tool in Illustrator. I used ‘create outlines’ to convert this type into an editable vector image.

 

Screenshot of using the direct selection tool to edit text

I edited the-now-vector letter by deleting anchor points with the direct selection tool.

 

Screenshot of using guidelines

I then shifted into wireframe mode and created guides to stick to, which is frequently used in logo design to create a uniform, clean, alignment.

 

Screenshot of editing the control handles

Finally, I looked at the finer details; to reflect the curve of the terminal on the ‘T’, I edited the control handles for the anchor points on the top of the ‘M’.

 

Design idea 2

Monogram 02 (playful)

This design idea takes a much more playful approach than the first. It pushes the boundaries of the concept of a monogram logo with its inflated 3D form, however, it still combines the letters ‘T’ and ‘M’. This type of design would be great for social media posts, possibly incorporating a short animation of the logo itself inflating.

 

Design idea 3

Monogram 03 (industrial)

This design took a more corporate, industrial approach, and captures a completely different feeling to the previous two. It relies on heavy geometric shapes, slightly softened by an applied transparency gradient .

 

Software tutorials

Throughout this project, I watched several video tutorials to assist in my illustrator learning.

I used this youtube video on the latest generative fill tips and tricks for illustrator, to help me gain a greater general understanding of current illustrator tools. This is where I thought of using generative fill to generate a pattern to apply over the monogram: Generative fill

Another tutorial that I relied on when creating the inflated monogram, was a tutorial on how to inflate shapes and objects in Illustrator, as I was keen to experiment with some sort of 3D elements within the module this term: 3D inflate tool

One of the software tutorials linked at the bottom of the brief that I used when creating my Monograms in Illustrator is how to outline fonts. This is a key step in editing type as a vector and this tutorial reminded me on how to use the shortcut “cmd+shift+o”: Outline type

 

Design resources and articles.

I suffer from relatively strong colour blindness, and therefore often rely on taking existing colour palettes from existing designs, or those that can be found in the real world. A resource that assists me in choosing colour combinations, is ‘Adobe Color’, which allows you to copy colours by their hex codes: Adobe Color

To inspire me with my design ideation process, I created a moodboard of existing monograms on Pinterest as advised in previous feedback from TY1SK1: Pinterest board

 

Learning throughout the module.

This module taught me many valuable software skills through the numerous tutorials that I read/watched and through pushing me out of my comfort zone and encouraging me to explore previously unused tools within the software. My biggest learning moment of the module was getting to grips with After Effects. I used in-depth design tutorials sourced from the website Skillshare which gave me a great understanding for the basics of the software. As Illustrator is the Adobe software that I feel most comfortable with, learning After Effects complimented this perfectly, as it builds on the vector images created in Illustrator.