7

I am about to print the dissertation in an online printing house in A4 format 222 pages adhesive binding. The printing house asked to send the cover of the dissertation in a separete file as a double page with a binding thickness of 15.4mm. I have the design in mind already (see image below) but I want to meet their demand concerning the spine thickness using LaTeX.

Cover Design (done in Inkscape 0.48) enter image description here

Some points about the cover design:

  1. The cover in black and text in white
  2. Logo1 is the logo of the university as an image in pdf format and logo2 is the logo of the online printing house (Yes, they give a discount as thank you)
  3. In the book spine (15.4mm thick), the text direction should be from below upwards so that when the book lies on its face cover (in this case you can't tell which book is this) the text in the spine can still be read in the correct direction as shown in the left image.
  4. The location of logo2 (on the back cover) is below which I could not reproduce using LaTeX, I did my search on this issue, it seems never easy, so I wish there is some better solution by now
  5. I want to achieve this using KOMA-script and XeLaTeX, I can provide a MWE, but I think that won't make sense may be because it is more about the approach rather than LaTeX code
doctorate
  • 4,173
  • 12
    Your question leaves all the effort to our community, even typing the essentials of a TeX document such as \documentclass{}...\begin{document} etc. As it is, most of our users will be very reluctant to touch your question, and you are left to the mercy of our procrastination team who are very few in number and very picky about selecting questions. You can improve your question by adding a minimal working example (MWE) that more users can copy/paste onto their systems to work on. If no hero takes the challenge we might have to close your question. – jub0bs Aug 23 '14 at 11:07
  • 2
    It is much easier to do this with InDesign but put the MWE anyway. – percusse Aug 23 '14 at 11:22
  • 2
    Covers generally aren't made in LaTeX, Why not to make it in Inkscape, Adobe InDesign or Corel Draw? – skpblack Aug 23 '14 at 11:35
  • Take a look at there in a relevant question an answer http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/78277/create-a-book-cover-with-spine-rear-page-and-flaps/81630#81630 – Thanos Aug 23 '14 at 11:36
  • Also take a look there for more options http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/showcase-of-beautiful-typography-done-in-tex-friends/86092#86092 – Thanos Aug 23 '14 at 11:37
  • If that suits your needs, let me know to write an answer! – Thanos Aug 23 '14 at 11:39

1 Answers1

13

Here is one attempt but if you are in a hurry use a WYSIWYG software. 

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Myriad Pro Bold}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\def\myhbleed{10mm}
\def\myvbleed{10mm}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
% Left page
\node[anchor=south west,inner sep=0,outer sep=0,minimum height=297mm+\myvbleed,minimum width=210mm+\myhbleed,fill] (lp) at (0,0) {};
% Spine
\node[font=\Huge,rotate=90,anchor=north west,inner sep=0,outer sep=0,minimum width=297mm+\myvbleed,minimum height=15.4mm,fill,text=white,text width=280mm,align=left] (spine) at (lp.south east) {Dark side of the Moon\hfill Pink Floyd};
%Right page
\node[anchor=south west,inner sep=0,outer sep=0,minimum height=297mm+\myvbleed,minimum width=210mm+\myhbleed,fill] (rp) at (spine.south west) {};
%Decorations
\node (flogo) at ($(rp.north)!0.3!(rp.south)$){\includegraphics[width=11cm]{dsotm}};
\node[text=white,align=center,font=\Huge] (ftitle) at ($(rp.north)!0.7!(rp.south)$) {Dark Side of the Moon};
%Actual A4 page size + spine + A4 page size - Remove before sending to printer
\draw[red] (\myhbleed,0.5*\myvbleed) rectangle ++(210mm+15.4mm+210mm,297mm);
% Outer guides  - Remove them for full picture
\draw[ultra thick] (\myhbleed,-1cm) node[below] {A}-- ++(210mm,0) node [below] {B} --++ (15.4mm,0) node[below] {C} --++(210mm,0) node[below] {D};
\draw[ultra thick] (-1cm,0.5*\myvbleed) node[left] {E}-- ++(0,297mm) node[left] {F};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

enter image description here

percusse
  • 157,807
  • There's no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact, it's all dark. Great, now I have my soundtrack for Sunday. :) – Paulo Cereda Aug 24 '14 at 10:50