• £300

• 29 designs

• 10 designers

---

Book Cover Design Brief

I need a cover for a book I have just written on investment.

Title: "Rational Macro"
Subtitle: "A Manifesto for Discretionary Global Macro and Tactical Asset Allocation"
Author: "John Butters"
All three of these should be on the cover.

I prefer elegant to bold design. Other than that, I have no design expertise and would like to see some creative ideas.

Global macro is the practice of forecasting the financial markets on the basis of changes in the economy, politics or other variables. The book is about approaching this task scientifically.

Parameters:
Paper size: Any. Design should be centred on page horizontally and vertically.
Format: High-quality PDF.
Cover/Trim Size: 5.06" x 7.81"
Spine: 0.25898"
Bleed: At least 0.125"

I am self-publishing on CreateSpace so any cover must conform to the CreateSpace guidelines, which are available here: https://www.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp (click "Book", then "Artwork", then "Using an Existing Fully Formatted Book Cover"). For your convenience, here are some extracts:

Crop/Registration marks: None.

Images/Fonts:

Any images may be tagged with your choice of CMYK or RGB profiles or left untagged in a generic color space. All images should be sized at 100%, flattened to one layer and placed in your native document at a resolution of at least 300 DPI. You should also embed all fonts in your PDF file.

Page Size:

Your cover must be a single (one-piece) PDF that includes the back cover, spine and front cover.

You can submit your cover on any size page as long as the printable area is:

* Measured exactly for your book's trim size, spine width and at least .125" bleed
* Centered horizontally and vertically

Minimum Cover Width: Bleed + Back Cover Trim Size + Spine Width + Front Cover Trim Size + Bleed
Minimum Cover Height: Bleed + Book Height Trim Size + Bleed

Barcode (back cover):

Our system will place the ISBN barcode in a space 2" wide and 1.2" tall. The bottom of this ISBN barcode is located 1/4" up from the bottom trim line of the cover. The right side of the ISBN barcode is located 1/4" to the left of the spine. Please ensure that you don't have any important images or text in the ISBN barcode location. You can also refer to our Artwork Templates for the exact size and position of the ISBN barcode on your final cover.

UPDATE:

This is not a personal finance book. It is an examination of the philosophy of high-level macro analysis. Off the top of my head, a few themes you might explore are:
- global
- science
- thinking
- modelling/mathematics
- statistics
- financial markets

Text for back cover:

"The closely-related fields of discretionary global macro and tactical asset allocation are widely practised in the financial markets. Wealth managers moving from equities to bonds, equity managers moving between offensive and defensive sectors, managers of discretionary macro funds and many others - including, of course, individual investors - seek to use their understanding of a changing political and economic environment to enhance their investment returns.

In this book, John Butters, a hedge-fund macro strategist, argues that they should be practised rationally and scientifically, and develops that idea into a complete investment process that encompasses the gathering of evidence, the formation of opinions and trade execution. A combination of thoughtful argument and practical experience and brimming with ideas, Rational Macro brings welcome clarity to a complex area that many investors consider their greatest challenge."

UPDATE 2:

Page count has changed. The spine should now be 0.254476 inches.

Target Market(s)

Intelligent financial-market professionals.

Industry/Entity Type

Environment

---

Look and feel

Each slider illustrates characteristics of the customer's brand and the style your logo design should communicate.

---

Requirements

Must have

• Elegant. Clean.

Should not have

• In-your-face, bold presentation and fonts.
  Personal-finance connotations.