Design a book like a pro
Jumpstart your Adobe® InDesign® CS projects with templates created by leading designers. Adobe InDesign CS PageMaker® Edition provides easy access to more than 80 templates, including these book publishing templates from Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich of HarperCollins.
To use a template, simply open the Template Browser, choose a template, and then replace the placeholders with your content.
Template design notes
As senior creative director and vice president at HarperCollins, designer Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich oversees the design of approximately 1,500 titles a year, and personally designs more than 150 of these titles. He delights in working with some of the finest writers in the world, and in producing covers that help their work make an immediate connection with readers browsing in bookstores.
So how does de Vicq recommend using the book jacket template and other promotional materials he’s selected for his template set? Deconstuct what you like about these templates, and use them as a starting point, which you can then adapt to the unique purpose of your book project. “There are so many books,” de Vicq explains. “The jacket is only going to focus your attention for 5 seconds when your eyes are scanning the shelves in a bookstore, so you have to create something that has an impact.”
InDesign tips
Effective layers. Store different elements on layers, which you can hide, show, lock, unlock, and target as you perform different layout tasks. For example, when working with de Vicq’s templates, choose Window > Layers to open the palette, and then click the Eye icon to the left of the layer names to hide or show what’s on that layer. Click a layer name to make it the active layer, so you can work with elements he’s stored on that layer.
Guide sets. Quickly set up a pattern of guides to help with a new layout that requires a precision similar to the book jacket template that Roberto de Vicq has created. Choose Layout > Create Guides. Then enter a value for Rows and Columns, specify the gutter size (a setting of 0 eliminates gutters between guides), choose whether the guides fit the page or the margins, and click OK. InDesign automatically lays out nonprinting ruler guides as specified.
Templates
Postcard
InDesign CS tip: Apply different colors to the stroke and fill of text to achieve the look that de Vicq uses in this title. The text remains editable (you can even apply gradient colors to editable text). Just select the text, and click the Formatting Affects Text icon in the Swatches palette or on the toolbox. Then click the Stroke icon and select a color from the Swatches palette, and click the Fill icon and select a color swatch.
Riser
InDesign CS tip: Set up your workspace just the way you like it for certain design tasks. Open or close the palettes you want, organize them to suit your work, and collapse them against the right or left side of the design window or monitor. Then save an arrangement as a named workspace, which you can activate anytime you need it. Choose Window > Workspace > Save Workspace, enter a name, and click OK. The name is then listed on the Window > Workspace menu.
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InDesign CS tip: Drag and drop editable Illustrator artwork into InDesign CS. For example, drag and drop the women's heads from Illustrator into InDesign, and then apply different colors to their stroke and fill, edit their paths, and more. Also, import a wide variety of image files, including native Photoshop files, TIFF images, and more. Choose Window > Links to open the Links palette, which helps you track and manage your linked files.
Inspiration: Lucky Girls
For book sales, it’s all about the cover.
At the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the exhibition of the top 50 book designs for the year is the most popular exhibition, a fact that AIGA leaders attribute to the deep respect designers have for the “disciplined dimensions that designing books demands.” That discipline always springs from a strong creative idea, such as the one that inspired the cover of Lucky Girls, a 2003 winner of AIGA’s 50 best books of the year.
“The cover is a series of different stamps like the ones the British make to celebrate their Queen-the ones that show her in profile,” explains designer Roberto de Vicq. “Lucky Girls is a book of short stories about about American women overseas, sad stories of people being displaced, and relating to different cultures, different systems of thinking. Each stamp shows a different profile and so becomes like a multitude of voices, like the idea of these short stories.”
De Vicq approaches each book design as a unique design project because the one sure thing is that there is no sure thing in book sales. “The jacket is somewhere between editorial and marketing, and the goal is to attract your audience, get them to grab and reach and pick it up.”
About the designers
Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, moved to New York City in 1982 on a painting scholarship to the Pratt Institute where he earned an MFA, and now works as Senior Creative Director/Vice President at HarperCollins overseeing the design of more than 1,500 book titles a year. In his spare time, he hones his creativity by designing children's books, such as Bembo’s Zoo, an abecedary that started as a present for his young daughter and turned into a highly acclaimed book and Web site (www.bemboszoo.com). Bembo’s Zoo features a menagerie of animals, each created out of the letters in its name using the Bembo font. It captures de Vicq’s playful design sensibility and passion for typography.
HarperCollins
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
(212) 207-7014
