Designing a publisher mark
An imprint is a name. A publisher mark is the picture that goes with it — the small logo at the foot of the spine, repeated on the title page, doing one job: telling a reader that this book came from a publisher rather than from a person with an account at a print company.
The name, the records and the ISBN catch behind all of it are a separate subject, worked through in Should you invent a publisher name? — and a mark only says publisher honestly if the ISBN says so too, which means owning the numbers rather than using a store's free one (Buying your own ISBNs). This page is about drawing the mark.
Where it appears, and at what size
The foot of the spine. This is the one that matters, and it is tiny. Spine width is set by your page count and paper: a 200-page book on KDP white stock has a spine of 0.450 in, about 11 mm, and a mark sitting across it with breathing room either side is a quarter of an inch wide. Some of your books will be thinner than that.
The title page. Usually at the foot, larger than the spine version but still small — this is a mark, not a headline. Sometimes the back cover too, near the barcode block, set quiet.
The spine is the constraint that decides the design, because it is the smallest place the mark has to work and the place a browsing reader sees it. Design for the spine and the other positions take care of themselves. Design for the title page and the spine version turns to mush.
What happens to a drawing at that size
At a quarter of an inch, printed with ink that spreads slightly into paper, three things disappear before anything else.
Thin lines. A hairline that looks elegant on screen either breaks up or fattens into something heavier than you drew.
Enclosed counters. The hole in a small letter e, the space between two close shapes — these fill in, and the mark becomes a blob with an outline and no interior.
Fine detail of any kind. Feather barbs, roof tiles, rigging on a ship. At spine size that detail is not simplified, it is averaged into gray.
What works
A simple silhouette. One creature, one object, one building, reduced to a shape you could cut out of paper with scissors.
A monogram. One or two letters, drawn or set, with generous counters and even weight.
A single strong shape. A circle with something in it, a triangle, a stylized wave. It does not have to mean much. Most publisher marks mean nothing; they identify.
Plain type, set well. A name in one good face, letterspaced and balanced, is a legitimate mark and a common one — readable at title-page size, still a shape at spine size.
Whatever you choose has to survive being printed in one color, because on a spine it usually is: solid black on a light spine, solid white knocked out of a dark one. Draw it in one color first and add color later only if it still works without.
What fails
- Gradients. They band, they shift with the printer, and at spine size they read as a smudge.
- Photographic elements. A photograph of a lighthouse is not a mark. A drawing of one might be.
- A detailed illustration. If it took an afternoon of line work, most of that afternoon is invisible at 6 mm.
- Anything whose meaning depends on small text inside it. A ribbon with "Est. 2019" across it, a motto around a circle, a name set in a curve around a crest. The text is unreadable and the shape is now cluttered by marks that look like dirt.
The test
Print it at the size it will appear on the spine — actual size, on your own printer — and look at it from arm's length. Not zoomed in on screen, not at a comfortable size on a page by itself. That single test rejects most first drafts and is faster than any amount of discussion.
Two variations are worth the extra minute: solid black on white, and white knocked out of a dark block, since both will happen. See The thumbnail test for the same discipline applied to the whole cover.
In the Cover Maker. It places a publisher mark at the foot of the spine sized as a share of the real spine width and clamped to it, so the mark cannot outgrow the fold, and it will use a different image there if the back-cover logo is the wrong version for a spine. It also flags a placed publisher logo that is under 300 DPI at the size it prints. Start your cover → · about the Cover Maker
File format matters here more than anywhere
A mark supplied as a small raster image looks soft, and it looks soft directly beside your title, which is sharp vector type. The contrast gives it away — a fuzzy logo next to crisp letters reads as a mistake even to someone who could not say what is wrong.
Keep the master as vector, and export from it at whatever size a job needs rather than enlarging a small export. Vector and raster, and why it matters for a cover explains why one of those works and the other cannot. If a designer made the mark, get the vector file from them at the time, not two years later.
Consistency is the whole point
A mark used once is decoration. A mark used the same way on every book is a publisher.
Same artwork, same position on the spine, same relative size, same treatment on the title page, book after book. That is the argument made for Series covers: the same shelf, three books along, and the mark is the cheapest version of it, because you draw it once.
Write the rules down while they are fresh: the file to use, where it sits, how big, which color on a dark spine. Book four is far enough away that you will not remember.
Make your cover
The Cover Maker is free to use: name your book, bring your artwork, and it draws the full wrap — front, spine and back — to your printer's own measurements. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Designing a spine people can read on a shelf · More: Should you invent a publisher name? · Vector and raster, and why it matters for a cover · Objects and symbols that read at thumbnail size