Cover is an important element to show the image and quality of an album. An excellent album cover can not only give people aesthetic visual enjoyment, but also provide certain ornamental value and intrinsic value for the album itself. It needs to be done through creativity such as theme, text and form. There are four common forms of expression in album cover design: direct expression, indirect expression, decoration and beautification, and text composition.
First, the direct expression of album cover design
The cover only shows the title of the book, the name of the author and the name of the publishing house. Use plain white paper and print one or two colors. This design is mostly used in academic books and specialized works. Its direct manifestation, that is, in the cover design, the graphics and patterns of the cover express the theme of the book in a direct way. This method requires that graphics and patterns can accurately reveal the theme, and have strong decorative effect and aesthetic feeling. In addition to summarizing and revealing the contents of the album with graphics and patterns, the design scheme also needs artistic processing through design means, surpassing simple and original theme symbols and becoming an overall design work from content to form.
Second, the indirect performance of album cover design
The design is based on vivid expression, concise explanation and images (paintings or photos) that basically reflect the main points of the content. Mostly used for practical and entertaining picture books. Indirect expression of the theme through analogy, symbol and metaphor is called indirect expression. This form of expression is widely used in album cover design. Because people's visual aesthetic activities are thoughts and feelings caused by vision, we often use indirect expression of the theme in design, so that readers can feel and appreciate the theme through association, sentiment and empathy in the reading process.
Third, the decoration and beautification of the album cover design
From the text to the cover, it fully conveys the creative comprehensive expression of the four elements of text, image, color and material. This design form is more suitable for cultural, artistic and ideological reading materials. Its content means and feels the expressive force of the seal, which often gives people unlimited artistic taste from the vision and even the heart.
Decoration and beautification is a common form of expression in cover design. Based on pure decoration and beautification, the album is decorated and beautified with graphics and patterns with a strong sense of form. This form is mostly used in the cover design of ancient picture books. Picture books have many themes and cover a wide range, so it is difficult to summarize the whole picture with a little, or the theme is abstract and difficult to shape. In this case, decorative design is mostly used. Of course, if you choose this type to decorate the album, you should pay attention to keeping the graphics and the theme of the album consistent and unified as far as possible, although the theme of the album is not disclosed and expressed.
Fourth, the text composition of album cover design
As a cultural commodity, the picture album makes the characters, especially the hieroglyphics of China, have a special position in the cover design of the picture album. Using words to design has two meanings when revealing the theme, namely visual graphics and text content, so the use of words is more unique in cover design.
In the picture album, words constitute creative design, aiming at enhancing the appeal of text modeling by visual communication of words, so as to better achieve the purpose of expressing the theme. The shape design of characters is different from the design of ordinary artistic characters. As the pattern of decorative subject, fonts are redesigned by using the meaning of characters and the pictographic structure of characters themselves, which sublimates the formal concept of fonts.