Now here’s what I feel is a good tip: Don’t use fancy type faces. It’s amazing how quickly they become trendy. Your choice loses its ‘different’ feel and soon becomes dated. For book cover design, stick to classic fonts.

You can’t go wrong with these: (But by all means experiment with variations.)

SANS SERIF:

Arial

Arial Black

Gill Sans MT

Century Gothic

Haettenschweiler

SERIF:

Garamond

Bookman Oldstyle

Century Schoolbook

Courier

Felix Titling

Albertus

I prefer Helvetica to Arial but it’s not an option on most programs. I certainly wouldn’t use Times New Roman in a title. In my opinion it lacks the refinement of Garamond.

Picmonkey doesn’t have a wide selection of what I consider ‘classic’ fonts. The many ‘fancy’ fonts available there are great for things like greeting cards and event posters, etc., but book cover design is a peculiar animal. Traditionally, it needs to stand the test of time.

There is a much wider choice of typefaces in Microsoft Word. So save your completed image from Picmonkey to your computer and open it in either PhotoScape or ACDSee for typesetting

In general, avoid using too many different fonts and sizes. Using a combination of styles effectively is an art. Let’s keep things simple and not risk ending up with a mess.

Two contrasting font styles can be effective if used wisely. A sans serif face for the author name and a serif face for the title, or vice versa. Try a variation of the author name in caps and the title upper and lower case. (The correct terms are: CAPS and lower case, or, upper and lower case. A typographer would never say, “Upper case” to mean caps.)

LETTER SPACE

This is an effective technique to give a ‘designery’ look. It works best when the text is all caps. Simply type a space between each letter.

KERNING

Kerning is the manipulation of space between letters to close them together. It’s time consuming to do on a word processor, (even more so in the old days when the lead had to be shaved) but worthwhile if the word is in a big size. Letters like A, J, L, T, V, Y when set in default can look separated in certain typefaces. More sophisticated typesetting machines can kern the space automatically, but we’re using a word processor, so it has to be done ‘by hand’.

If you have a word like ADULT, you will need to type the word in 3 parts: A/DUL/T and ‘paste’ them together, with the space tight between AD, normal between DUL, and overlap the T on the L.