WHAT WE’RE CREATING:

Hey Design Cutters! Today I’m going to show you how to put your texture resources to work, and walk you through the process of creating a beautiful Japanese inspired book cover design.

You’ll learn plenty of great techniques in this tutorial, including how to layer up and blend your textures, how to create Japanese style illustrations, and how to work with text and other elements.

Vintage tube advertising design tutorial

Follow along with this tutorial: Download the freebies

Today we have another great freebie for you creative geeks. Denise at 2 Lil Owls has kindly agreed to give you a great sample pack of the textures in this week’s deal.

These 5 textures are incredibly grungy and perfect for creating awesome texture art. They’re full of rich colours, vintage details and come at high resolution.

Remember, this freebie is just a tiny sample taken from our current deal 310 All New Textures from 2 Lil Owls (Plus Awesome Bonuses) Just $27 (93% Off). These are the best artistic textures in the world, and all come with extended licensing, as part of this launch special deal at Design Cuts.


Step 1:

Open up Photoshop and create a new A5 document (1748px x 2480px, 300dpi resolution)

From the great freebie pack that accompanies this tutorial, copy and paste the 2LO Burnished 20 texture onto your canvas and scale to fit.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 2:

Let’s start building up the background… Depending on whether you have Japanese language settings enabled, you can complete this step a couple of ways:

Book Cover Design Tutorial

1. If you don’t have Japanese language settings enabled, download the vector versions of the characters as part of your freebie bundle (above) and copy and paste them on to your canvas :)

2. If you have Japanese language settings enabled and are confident typing with them, do the following:

– Select an Asian font such as Hiragino Mincho ProN W3

– Set the size to 500pt, colour to white

– Type “sakura” and convert to kanji

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Rotate the text counter-clockwise, then change the layer blend mode to Soft Light and reduce the opacity to 70%.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 3:

From the freebie pack, copy and paste the 2LO Burnished 25 texture onto your canvas, scaling to fit. Change the blend mode to Overlay and reduce the opacity to 50%.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Download this gorgeous Cherry blossom photo by Pixel Anarchy to use as the background image:

Cherry Blossom Photo

Paste it on to your canvas and transform so it fits the width.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Set the blend mode to Soft Light and reduce the opacity to 70%.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

At this stage it’s a bit dark, so to brighten it up duplicate the layer, changing the blend mode to Screen and opacity to 75%.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

From the freebie pack, paste the texture 2LO Burnished 5 onto your canvas and scale to fit. Change the blend mode to Lighten for some nicely distressed edges.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 4:

We’re now going to create some additional design elements using Illustrator.

Open up a new Illustrator A5 document (1748px x 2480px, 300dpi resolution) with the grid showing for guidance. Using the pen tool, draw half a petal shape like in the image below:

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Duplicate the object (click + drag whilst pressing Alt) and flip vertically

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Use the Pathfinder tool to unite the two outlines then fill in black. (Hang on to this shape, as we’ll be using it again later in the tutorial…)

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Once you have your simple petal shape, resize and duplicate like crazy to create a background of falling petals! Keep the petals denser at the top and rotate them to give a more random, natural feel.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 5:

Back in Photoshop, duplicate the 2LO Burnished 20 layer and set to screen. Rename the Layer ‘Petal Screen’.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Copy and paste the petals from Illustrator onto your Photoshop canvas and name the layer ‘Petals’.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Using the Magic Wand tool, click on any area of the layer that isn’t black.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

With the petals still selected, activate the texture layer below and create a layer mask. Hide the original petals layer to see the effect.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

However, we want the petals to appear whiter so let’s fix this. With the layer mask selected, go to Image > Adjustments > Invert (shortcuts: Cmd + I / Ctrl + I)

You now have a lovely falling-blossom effect :)

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 6:

Create a new layer called ‘Blue Line’ and draw a thin rectangle (colour #465e81 ) towards the left hand side of the canvas.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 7:

Download the Halftone Vectors by Go Media from the Freebie area:

Halftone Vectors

Open the vector file in Illustrator and copy and paste the following design on to your Photoshop canvas:

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Scale to fill the canvas:

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Set the layer blend mode to screen for a subtle textured effect.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 8:

Create a new group called ‘Wrap’. A lot of Japanese products like books and CDs feature a paper sleeve known as an ‘obi-maki’ – this is what we’ll be creating in the next few steps to give the image a more authentic feel.

From the textures pack, copy and paste 2LO Burnished 3 on to your canvas and transform so it’s somewhere between half to two-thirds of the width of the cover:

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Adjust the hue/Saturation to the following:

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Hue/Saturation
Colorize: selected
Hue: 220
Saturation: 30
Lightness: +30

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Now we’re going to add a drop shadow to make it look like it’s wrapped around the cover.

Double click on the layer to open the Layer Style options. Select Drop Shadow with the following settings:

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Drop Shadow
Blend Mode: Multiply, #000000
Opacity: 75%
Angle: 90
Distance: 0px
Spread: 10%
Size: 25px

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 9:

Copy and paste the freebie texture 2LO Burnished 14 on to your canvas and scale to fit. Set the blend mode to Multiply and opacity to 50%. This adds a nice aged colour.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 10:

We’re now going to make the cherry blossom motif, using the petal design we created back in Step 4.

Open up a new Illustrator document and copy and paste your petal design into it.

Select the Rotate tool. Whilst pressing Alt on your keyboard, set the point of rotation by clicking slightly below your petal (use the grid to help). In the dialogue box that opens, set 72 as the Angle and select copy:

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Repeat this transformation a further 3 times by pressing Cmd + D for Mac (Ctrl + D on windows) to complete the flower design. You can do this through the menu bar via Object > Transform > Transform again.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Group the petals together and draw a circle around them. Align so they are centred to each other and make sure the petals are behind the circle. With the Pathfinder tool, select Minus Back to cut out the petal shapes.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Draw another circle around this with a nice chunky outline and no fill. Align so that it’s all centred and we’re ready to copy and paste it into Photoshop.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 11:

Invert the layer to make the stamp white, then transform so that it sits nicely towards the bottom of the obi-maki/wrap. You might also want to tilt it to a slight angle for interest.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

We’re now going to add a rough, stamp effect to the motif.

Create a new Pattern Fill layer. In the Pattern Fill dialogue box, click the thumbnail to get the palette to pop out, then click the tiny arrow at the top right and select the ‘Artist Surfaces’ pattern set. Select the ‘Washed Watercolour’ paper for the fill pattern.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Create a new Adjustment Layer set to Posterize and set the level to 5 to get a much grainier appearance.

Using the Magic Wand tool, click on any predominant grey area:

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Once you have your selection, hide both the Pattern Fill and Adjustment layer. Activate the layer with your motif and add a layer mask.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Reduce the layer opacity to 70%. You should now have a much more textured, stamp-like effect.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Create a group called ‘Blossom Stamp’ and move all the layers we’ve just used in to it.

Step 12:

Duplicate the group ‘Blossom Stamp’. Move and transform it so that it fills a good portion of the top left corner and the angle is different to the original version.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Set the group Blend mode to Linear Light and Opacity 30%.

Within the group, select the layer with your motif and change the hue/saturation to the following:

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Hue/Saturation
Colorize: selected
Hue: 0
Saturation: 65
Lightness: -75

This gives the stamp a traditional vermillion colour.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 13:

We’ll now add a mixture of English and Japanese text to our book cover.

Again, depending on whether you have Japanese language settings enabled, you can complete this step a couple of ways:

1. If you don’t have Japanese language settings enabled, use the vector versions of the characters from earlier and just copy and paste them on to your canvas!

Book Cover Design Tutorial

2. If you have Japanese language settings enabled and are confident typing with them , do the following:

– Select the Vertical Type Tool

– Type ‘Sakura’ and convert it to kanji using a chunky sans-serif Asian font, such as Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro W6, colour #ffffff

– Type ‘Haru no Saiten’ using a more traditional Asian font, such as Hiragino Mincho ProN W6, colour #ffffff

– Using the same font, type ‘Design Cuts’ and convert to katakana.

Adjust the size and position so they look similar to the image below:

Book Cover Design Tutorial

And back to English! With the vertical type tool, select a simple sans-serif font, such as Helvetica Neue or Arial, and type ‘SAKURA’ in all caps. Position it to the right of the Japanese text.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Using the Horizontal type tool, type “SAKURA: A Celebration of Spring by Design Cuts” and adjust the font sizes and line heights so that it looks similar to the image below:

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Finally for this step, draw a thin white rectangle on a new layer, then duplicate to act as a divider for the text on the blue obi-maki/wrap.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 14:

Finally, download this Old Paper Texture by Calmino Palmero

Old Paper Texture

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Paste it on to your canvas and scale to fit. Set the layer blend mode to multiply and opacity to 50% to take the edge off the white text give it a more aged look

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Now we have our design finished, let’s take it up a notch and create an actual mock up of how it would look as a book cover.

Step 15:

First, we’ll need a mockup template. Here’s a great free one you can download from Graphics Burger.

Hardcover Book Mockup

After unzipping the file, open up the Hardcover Book Mockup.psd file in Photoshop. Copy and paste the background image provided into the document then hide the Book_Back cover group.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Double click on the layer that says ‘Your Design Here’ and paste a jpg image of your design onto the new document that opens. Transform it slightly to fit then hit ‘Save’.

Go back to the original template and you should see your design is now on the cover!

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Step 16:

To add interest to the background, you can choose from a great selection from subtlepatterns.com. In this tutorial, we’ve gone for Retina Wood.

Retina Wood

Book Cover Design Tutorial

Use this to create a new Pattern fill layer above the original background and set the blend mode to Multiply, Opacity 70%.

Duplicate this layer and set the blend mode to Overlay, and Opacity to 50%.

Book Cover Design Tutorial

AND WE’RE DONE!

I really hope you enjoyed this tutorial and have fun with your new textures. Try experimenting with various blend modes, opacity and hue/saturation to get some great effects.

Remember, there’s only a few days left to get our huge texture deal for just $27, so if you don’t want to miss out, we recommend buying it now.

310 All New Textures from 2 Lil Owls (Including Extended License + Awesome Bonuses) – 93% Off

Book Cover Design Tutorial