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In this chapter we are going to look at typographic solutions to designing book covers
and we are going to begin by looking at some examples of successful book
covers that use mainly type. As an example of the classic Penguin up here,
just bands of orange and type works beautifully. Graham Greene, just the author name, title
of the book, simple illustration in some cases, some cases not even the illustration.
Same with the J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.
Moving down here to the more contemporary book covers, things get a little bit more
involved they are a little bit fancier if you will.
Essentially it's just about letterforms and playing with those letterforms, in
this case we have this sort of Dada-inspired typographic solution.
Massive changes in the scale of the letters here for Darkness at Noon.
This treatment of Ulysses inspired by a Bauhaus type solution, and this one here
which I am actually in, a book of six-word memoirs and well, that's it.
It's all about type. Let's see how we can create our own typographic
book designs working with our hypothetical series of George Orwell books
and beginning with an example that uses distressed type.
In this the first of our typographic solutions working with the first of our
three books in the series, Homage to Catalonia, we are going to see how
we can use two different techniques to distress our type. And also this is a partially
photographic solution as well because the type is set against the backdrop
of a red piece of material which can signify either a red bandana or perhaps
a red flag. Both significant to the story of the Spanish
Civil War, which is the book's subject. We are going to begin with a Photoshop document
and I am going to turn Off the type layers for a moment and we will take
a look at this piece of red material. I went to a fabric shop, bought a piece of
red material, put it on the floor of my apartment took a photograph of it, imported
it, tweaked the levels of it, and sized it so that it's at the appropriate size,
5 and 1/8th inch. That one 1/8th allowing for a bleed on the
right-hand side and seven and three quarter inches high, allowing for an eighth
of an inch bleed off the top and an eighth of an inch bleed off the bottom and
the bleed guide indicated by these turquoise guides that I drew just by pulling
them out from the ruler. So this is our starting point and then we
have this our type. Obviously the title of the book and the slogan,
the rallying cry "No Pasaran" meaning "they shall not pass", an important
rallying cry during the Spanish Civil War. So what we are going to do is look at two
different techniques for distressing the type and we will split this into two separate
movies. So for the yellow type we are going to use technique number one.
Just to make things a little bit easier I am going to select these two layers
and make them into a layer group, come to the Layers panel menu.
New Group from Layers and the only that's saving me is it means I only have to
do this once rather than twice, because I can apply the layer mask to the group
rather than to the individual layers. So both of these techniques involve using
a layer mask and that is this thing down here. When I click on that I add a layer
mask to the group. That layer mask is white at the moment, meaning
that it's currently having no effect. If I fill that layer mask with black it's
going to mask the type entirely. So I am going to do that, switch my foreground
color to black, and then use this very useful keyboard shortcut in Photoshop
to fill my layer mask with my foreground color and that is Alt and the Backspace/Delete
key. My type disappears.
You will see that my layer mask is black. And what I am now going to do is I am going
to switch to my Brush tool and choose an appropriate brush.
Here I have chosen a Spatter Brush and I have then adjusted its spacing,
made the spacing bigger than it began, so we will have it around 30%. That will be fine.
You may also want to increase or decrease the size of this. I have gone up
to about 250 pixels and to increase the size of your brush the right square
bracket, two to the right of the P key. To decrease the size the left square bracket.
Now I am going to switch my foreground color to white by pressing the X key.
That will toggle your foreground background colors, and then just start painting over
the mask. I have the mask selected.
You will see there is a frame around that thumbnail right there.
That's my visual cue that the mask is selected and as I do so, it's revealing
the type with the texture of the brush and if we take a look at the mask. now it looks
like that. Wherever the mask is white then the content
of that layer group is revealed. Alt+Click on the mask will show you the image.
Alt+Click on the mask will show you the mask. So you are in toggle back and forth between
those two different views. So there is our first technique for creating
distressed type, which is very, very simple, and I think very effective.
In the next movie we will look at another technique for achieving much the same end.