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

DK Eyewitness Travel Covers

Destination Guides

DK Guides have also changed their standard cover design. Their Japan and The Green Islands guide is the old design and the other two are the new design. See how the use of the new sans-serif font is more impactful than the serif font used for Japan and The Greek Islands.

The consistent element across all of them is the black banner at the top with their DK logo and Eyewitness Travel branding. They have also positioned the destination image with a white border around it and no text to obscure the view.

They’ve moved away from calling out how many photographs, detailed maps and illustrations the travel guide contains, and instead use a tagline: The guide that shows you what others only tell you, which calls out the image-laden content. They also include a prominently displayed edition year.

City Guides

The DK Guides logo black banner at the top is smaller and the primary focus of these City Guides is the city name and the single image that spreads to both edges of the cover.

There’s a good use of white space at the top title treatment area, and the thin font style used for the city name, helps to promote this light and airy feel of these covers. To me, this font/white background design feels contemporary and modern.

Back Roads Guides

Each guide uses the white BACK ROADS series branding on a blue background. Each photo spans the entirety of the cover and they all photos have the same look and feel of 60% image and 40% sky.

The bottom corner is curled up with a glimpse of a map beneath – which is used to promote a pull out map. Each book calls out how many leisurely drives included in each guide using white text on a colored banner background.

Family Guides

The Paris Family guide with two images and a banner at the bottom of the cover looks messy and busy, whereas the other two newer design guides look much cleaner and less cluttered.

Top 10 Guides

Each cover in this guide book series uses a consistent color banding at the top and bottom of the book, and then reverses the color combo for the location.

• Banner: white text on Blue/Red/Pink background
  • Top 10
  • Your Guide to the 10 Best of Everything
  • Circle: Includes Detailed Maps
• Destination text in Blue/Red/Pink Text on White background

As you can see in the older design of the Naples guide book has a narrower dimension, but it also has more text on it which makes the cover looked cramped. In the newer design DK guides have simplified their cover text.

If you’re creating a book with less content, making the dimensions smaller can help your paperback feel more substantial, but you may have to adjust the quality of text you use on your 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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