How to design a trade book cover

In a career spanning more than 30 years,Tony Palmer has designed award-winning covers for books by the likes of Morris Gleitzman, Sonya Hartnett, Bryce Courtenay and Isobelle Carmody. So how does he do it?

It starts with sketches

Morris Gleitzman’s Too Small to Fail tells the story of the global financial crisis through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy, Oliver, whose parents own a small investment bank. Morris definitely wanted a camel on the cover, even if it was on the back.

Hand-drawn type

Line of Sight is a noir thriller set inmid-1970s Perth as heroin floodsinto town. These ideas morphed into the final typeface for the title.

Pulling it together

A series of photographic images were layered to make Line of Sight’s moody cover.

Try and try again (and again and again)

This early sketch for the cover of Sonya Hartnett’s novel The Midnight Zoo stayed on the drawing board – the finished cover was quite different.

Colour trial

Once the image elements have come together, there can be experimenting with colour to get the right feel.

Finished art

The finished covers (with Morris’ camel on Too Small to Fail).