Travel Guide Cover Design Case Study

This is a continuation of my article series where I review and assess the cover design elements used by the traditional and indie travel guide publishers. By reviewing how these publishing companies and indie authors combine images, fonts, color, and design elements into a cohesive design, you’ll get invaluable insight into the best approach for designing your travel guide cover.

The most important thing to remember is that your reader has specific expectations when it comes to buying a book within a niche, you only have to look at the primary book niches like romance, thriller, cozy mystery etc. to see how each niche has their own set of design styles that help to communicate the book’s content to their target audience, and travel guides are no different.

When you browse the Amazon bestsellers in your genre, you should notice patterns in color schemes, fonts, layouts, and images. You’ll want your cover to stand out by looking awesome, yet ensure it naturally fits into your genre. via Dave Chesson

Marco Polo Covers

Destination Guides

Marco Polo make their covers stand out by using distinctive destination text, which draws you in to figure out what the text is spelling out. They’ve used their brand colors of red text on a yellow background in the top banner name and logo, and balanced it out with a Travel with Insider Tips call-out in the bottom right corner. There is also a mobile call-out promoting their free touring app.

Their destination image covers about 50% of the cover, and they use a plain block of color as a text background to feature four iconic aspects of the destination. There’s a lot going on in these covers, but the oversized destination text with a white line above and below it, counterbalances the complexity.

Spiral Binding

Marco Polo also offers some of their guides in a spiral bound format. These are itinerary based guides and the binding makes it a lot easier to lay the book flat.

Not many distributors offer this spiral binding to print on demand paperbacks. Amazon KDP don’t, and when I last followed up with IngramSpark, they don’t either – but they did say “watch this space” – so it looks like they may be considering it. Currently LuLu is one of the few distributors who offer this style of book binding. Watch this LuLu Book Unboxing to see and hear about the assessment of their spiral binding cover.

Travel Guide Cover Design Industry Comparisons

There are distinct niche norms for destination travel guides, although each traditional publisher has developed a branded look that readers can automatically identify with. Your role, as a cover designer, is to assess the industry norms, and create a cover that is representative of your content, your writing style, and the travel niche you want to feature in.

Click for more Travel Guide Cover Design Articles

Read more articles in my How to Write a Travel Guide Series

I’m putting the finishing touches on my How to Write and Self-Publish a Travel Guide Series, which details a step by step approach for writing and producing your own travel guide. It’s part of a four-part series aimed at helping travel bloggers achieve passive income based on their passions and existing content.

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