Some Helpful Tips on Accumulating Wealth - case study

David Eann & Company came to us with a finished manuscript in hand and asked us to help them develop an informative, eye-grabbing, and aesthetically pleasing book cover while keeping things simple, to the point, and easily dissected by the customer.

We took the project gladly and started out by brainstorming with our staff here. We asked ourselves: What have other books in this field done? Who did things right? Who did things wrong? Who do we want to emulate? Who do we want to separate ourselves from?

Along with these questions, we also asked ourselves other questions regarding the overall presentation. Was the book going to be a tongue-in-cheek, finger shaking know-it-all guide, or was it going to be released by a professional with genuine knowledge in the field?

The author of the book, David E. Scott has extensive training in several fields and is extremely educated. His credentials made him the perfect person to write this book. As such, we decided to go professional and clean with the project.

Color choice

We toyed with several different color choices. After some thought, we chose to use greens and hues of grays and tans, lightly saturated with dollar green. First of all, green is the color of money, and that is the topic of this book. Green, especially darker greens and the hues of green found on the US dollar indicate wealth. We chose green in order to convey this message overall. Green was a natural choice. After all, it implies, "Pick me up. I know what I'm talking about."

Image choice

The first in-house draft of this cover had no image on it. We designed using only colors and text. Once complete, however, we decided that it needed a bit more to be eyecatching. We chose an image of several one-hundred dollar bills, as it is the largest common bill in US currency. Also, it is the most recognizable, even with parts of it obscured by layout elements and edges of the book cover.

When we first placed the image, it was at full opacity, but we realized that the image now distracted from the greens we had chosen for the cover. To counteract this, we saturated the image with the same greens from the cover's background. This gives a faded, deeper appearance to the image on the front, but still has a powerful effect to the eye.

Layout

The layout for this long title was no easy feat. We adjusted the image several times until we were able to find the perfect balance between images and solid color. The title placed in the center of the front cover was bleeding into the background too much, so we remedied that with a simple bar behind the main title. We adjusted font size and layout to streamline the title to the natural passage of a reader's eye.

We chose to place the authors name at the bottom left hand corner, in a larger than typical font for the book's genre, to give it presence without being intrusive to the detailed message being delivered by the title.

View the finished project in our portfolio.