Book Cover Design

There are many considerations which go into creating a book or report cover. No one can give you a formula for success. With millions of books out there, you would not want your book to resemble too much another book and be lost in space. So, how will you draw attention to your book? Can you take the entire book and encapsulate it in a single image? Secondly, could you create such an image? The case we are going to examine is the case of a book entitled Think Like Beethoven. This book is about the principles involved in both classical musical composition and creative thought in general. Such ideas are very difficult to convey in an image, but it would seem to be the case that no image could better convey the main idea of the book than an image of Beethoven, himself. Overall, I sought to induce an impression in a potential reader along these lines: Beethoven clearly knew something I don't know today—perhaps I could learn something from him—maybe I should read this book. I deliberately sought to convey the mystery of Beethoven's thoughts via a painting showing Beethoven in thought and an unusual cover font derived from the old German Fraktur fonts.

Of the 19th century Public Domain images of Beethoven, this 1820 painting by Joseph Karl Stieler, has a few points to recommend it. It portrays Beethoven actively writing, or maybe correcting, a musical score. It seems to show Beethoven thinking and acting, and is thus an image which would seem to be appropriate for the title of the book. It is very colorful and would blend easily into a very dark background for a cover. However, the Romantic stylistic characteristics of the painting—windblown hair, eyes in dark shadows, dark forest background—puts Beethoven too much into the mental category of a "romantic," or "impulsive genius." Feedback on this first attempt was that the cover as a whole was too reminiscent of book covers from the 1920s and 1930s in Germany—way too gloomy and too much connected to the past.

This 1803 portrait by Christian Horneman conveyed a younger, self-confident Beethoven looking forward to a bright future. Also, Beethoven really liked this portrait. However, the available image is a tiny headshot that cuts off the top of Beethoven's head! To use this image I would have to expand Horneman's work outward in all directions. Fortunately, that was not too difficult as I would only have to paint background and simple drapery. This next attempt, including the semi-Faktur font, still got negative reviews (and Beethoven's hair was still too flat across the top. In the final version, a bit more hair has been added on top and a simple sans serif font was used. This final version was agreed by all to convey a more future-oriented concept. This cover conveys the idea that after reading this book, you, like Beethoven, can confidently look toward the future.