Ever had a desire to create your own book cover? Or are you just stuck on where to begin setting up your file? My new Design Like a Pro tutorial released on Youtube walks you through the setup to get your book cover ready for the shelf.

What the tutorial covers:
1. Learn how to setup your file in Indesign for a 6x9 book cover.
2. Don’t forget about the spine!
3. Once your file is setup, get pro tips for your design’s color, typography and layout.

Thanks to arnoldhenry758 for the tutorial request. You can send your own requests and questions to ideas@nickihart.com. You just might be featured in an upcoming episode!

Ever wanted to design a postcard that you can hand out to potential clients or direct mail? How about designing an all-in-one solution that does both? This tutorial walks you through the basic setup of a 4x6 postcard in Photoshop taking into account the common mailing standards from the US Postal Service. By the time we finish, you will have a ready to print PDF of your postcard. The postcard is full color on the front and black and white on the back. This is a standard postcard format for direct mailers because it is very economical to print.

Note: This tutorial is not a step-by-step guide to designing the entire postcard. In the interest of time, I have a mockup already in place. I always encourage you to apply these techniques to your own creative design.

»View more Design Like a Pro Tutorials

In this second part tutorial for designing book covers, we go to the next level and create a dust jacket in Indesign. Take the same design from the first tutorial and increase the file width to accomodate the inside flaps of the dust jacket. Also features some design pro tips.

» Final document size: 21 inches (wide) by 9 inches (height).
» This includes the 1” spine and don’t forget the 1/8” bleed on all sides.

See the first tutorial here!