Dos and Don'ts: Images

There are certain dos and don'ts when it comes to the image/s you use in the background for your cover. I'll be sharing some things that I've learnt over my past year of cover-making. Especially for Wattpad.

Size



Low resolution is a big don't when it comes to cover-making. Usually there's a higher resolution version or there are similar images that are bigger in size.



Order

It's always better to do your crop before anything else as you may end up cutting off text. For Wattpad the ratio is 16:25.

Colour of the font

If it's a dark background, the font should be white and vice versa for the sake of visibility.

The Fonts I Use

I use a multitude of fonts. Some that came with Windows as well as Microsoft Office. And also ones that came from the internet.

Some of my favourites are AR Julian, Freestyle Script, peach sundress ~, Rage Italic and SF Slapstick Comic.

AR Carter

AR Julian

Castellar

Elephant

Freestyle Script

Harlow Solid Italic

Love Ya Like A Sister

peach sundress ~

Rage Italic

SF Slapstick Comic

Still Time

White or Black?

The choice of the colour of your font is usually not one you get to make. Depending on the background of where you want the text to be, you're usually stuck with either black or white.

I personally prefer white because it makes the text stand out more.

I'm also a sucker for shadows.

But sometimes you're left with making it black due to the brightness of the background.

Black isn't all that bad but I usually try for white. Sorry.

My Progress Over the Past Year

I started making covers when I joined Wattpad in May of 2015 (the world was so ancient back then). I immediately discovered Wattpad's cover-making app Covers by Wattpad.

Let's just say I hadn't perfected the art of cover-making back then.

Or book titles...

But with the help of a few other apps I made a few decent-looking ones. Thankfully.

Still hadn't gotten that book title thing right.

Then I thought of making book covers on Photoscape... It went well-ish.

At least I was getting my photos from Pinterest now!

And after a long, long time, I decided on doing a cover in Paint.NET.

Don't even ask what made me think that was such a great idea. But I was inspired by the If I Stay cover.

That was also the beautiful day I discovered what Wattpad's cover ratio is.

*angels sing* 16:25. With a beautiful maximum of 640 x 1000 pixels.

Which meant that the...uh stunning cover above was cut off.

Screw you, Wattpad and your freaking ratios.

After making quite a good cover on my laptop I decided to take a leap of faith and look up online photo editors.

I found Ribbet *angels sing even louder*.

That's when my covers started to look like the ones in the background.

You gotta love Pinterest.

But with just about everything that exists, I discovered more.

You could load your own fonts. Ermagherd. OMFG. I'm crying. Not really. I'm just typing.

#whenyourcoversblowyourownmind

But then I started adding quotes. Like OMG. I have never felt so smart in my life.

That's a lie. I've felt smart on multiple occasions.

But that's not where it ends.

For I ditched Ribbet and returned to Photoscape with better skillz.

And shaddowz.

You gotta love shadow effects.

Hi There!

My name's Taylee and I'm on Wattpad as ColourFluff. I've made covers for mostly friends and family but there was also that one time *smirks*...

It has eight million views. Eight. Million. OMFG.

And it has my cover!!! Gghjhghgdfkjghdjgghkk.

Try say that ten times fast.

If you want to see any of my covers there's a list to the left categorised by author.