Hardcover Design Guidelines & Templates

DO

Use 300 DPI or High Resolution images
Edit and save in CMYK
Use Vector graphics
Convert all text into Graphic Form/Outlines
- Illustrator & Indesign: Type>Create Outlines

DON’T

Use graphics taken from websites
Add print or crop marks
Save as multi-page PDF
Flatten layers before saving – it’ll reduce your print quality

Bleed Area

Extend all colors and graphics to the full edge of the bleed area – it will make sure you don’t end up with white edges on your book cover when it is wrapped.

Cover Edge

This is the edge of the hardcover, where we aim to wrap the design. Your background still needs to run to the edges of the bleed area.

Safe Area

Keep all the key elements of your design, including text, logos, and iconography within the this area to insure it is not wrapped around the edge of your hardcover.

Flex Area

This is the edge of the hardcover, where we aim to wrap the design. Your background still needs to run to the edges of the bleed area.

Hardcover dimensions—8.5″x11″

	Total size in Inches	Total size in Pixels	Total size in Centimeters
A spine	19.25″ x 12.25″	5575px x 3675px	48.9cm x 31.12cm
B spine	19.4″ x 12.25″	5820px x 3675px	49.28cm x 31.12cm
C spine	19.65″ x 12.25″	5895px x 3675px	49.91cm x 31.12cm
D spine	19.9″ x 12.25″	5970px x 3675px	50.55cm x 31.12cm
E spine	20.15″ x 12.25″	6045px x 3675px	51.18cm x 31.12cm

Hardcover Page Count

	# of Pages	# of Sheets	Width in Inches	Width in mm
A spine	10—120 pages	5—60 sheets	0.25″	6.4mm
B spine	120—220 pages	60—110 sheets	0.5″	12.7mm
C spine	220—360 pages	110—180 sheets	0.75″	19.7mm
D spine	360—470 pages	180—235 sheets	1″	25.4mm
E spine	470—610 pages	235—305 sheets	1.25″	31.8mm

Why file types do you recommend?

To help make your job easier, Powis accepts a wide range of file formats. These are: PDF, TIFF, PNG, JPEG.

For the best results, we recommend:

PDF: This file format protects your graphics and enables us to get the best results whether your design includes, text, graphics and/or photography
TIFF: This file format is known for its extremely high quality, and is primarily used in photography and desktop publishing. If you are working in Photoshop, you can Save-As into TIFF while maintaining your file’s layers.

Why 300 DPI?

Files such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF etc., are made up of a thousands of tiny ‘dots’ or ‘pixels’. These pixels are all the same size, but can be different colors. The amount of pixels or dots in an image is called ‘resolution’. When there are lots of pixels and an image looks smooth or photographic, that’s ‘high resolution’. When there are less pixels an image often looks blocky and bad.

For this reason, we ask for 300 DPI or ‘High Resolution’ graphics – these have a large number of pixels available and will look smooth & precise when printed.

Hardcover Design Guidelines & Templates

8.5″ x 11″ PDF Templates

8.5″ x 11″ Photoshop Templates

6″ x 9″ PDF Templates

7″ x 10″ PDF Templates

DO