I thought I should mix it up a little for today's tutorial! At the time of releasing this chapter I had just updated my account's theme and thought I should discuss the process one takes in creating a theme and how I have evolved in my own style during my time on this platform (on this profile at least- I had an account when I was younger, but it was super cringe and good luck finding it!).

In the beginning 

So when I first started I had little designing skill. My very first theme was just me using images on my USB so I didn't look like a total noob with blank pictures. I didn't have any books yet and my theme looked like this:

There is really no theme whatsoever. This is mostly due to a lack of thought or effort. Most people on Wattpad tend to pick their theme based on a cool profile picture and wallpaper they just find on Google- like what I did here. There's nothing inherently wrong with this method, it just means that often the look is not cohesive and you don't stand out as much.

My next theme was created with a little bit more thought, but still lacked the "aesthetic touch". Nothing was "bad" per say, just not stylish enough to really make one go "Oh wow" (does anyone get my reference?). You'll see what I mean in a sec. 

(There are only three of the same covers as I only had one book at the time and it looks better with the three filled in rather than just one)

So, the first issue was that I used PowerPoint and didn't know about pixel to centimetre converters, so the canvas was the wrong size. I ended up needing to fix it several times so all the words would fit! Overall the theme, again, lacks an aesthetic feel. It's hard to quantify exactly the issue, but when you see an aesthetic account you can just tell. The closest resemblance to cohesion between the cover and the profile picture/ banner is that all the images are Yu-Gi-Oh! related. This was due to my only book at the time being about Yu-Gi-Oh! so it made sense, and the relevance to my book was also emphasized by using the manga style as it was based on the manga not the anime, so it wasn't totally thoughtless. However, it's just the prettiest to look at. 

Onwards to the first theme that had even an ounce of "aesthetic"...

(Only the middle book was ever published, but I included the other covers to give a better scope into the theme at the time)

This was the first theme I created on Canva and the book covers were made to the right scale. There was also a greater consistency between the palette of the covers and the other graphics. Overall it was more cohesive than I had previously created, and more "aesthetic". However, there were still some issues. The background is a little busy and doesn't really match the characters. This is one of the hardest tasks when creating a theme, rather than a singular cover. When creating a theme the palette has to suit all characters and this is not always easy, especially if you have characters from different series that often don't have similar palettes. Also I don't know why I went with pink as it's not really my colour. I do like pastels but I'm a darker writer so the theme conflicts with my writing style (not that that really mattered for the style of book I had at the time, but it's still something to keep in mind). 

So this theme is where I'd say I started to set up a mood that better suited me. Overall the theme works and is cohesive and all that, but it's a little too minimalistic. What I mean is if you look at the aesthetic accounts on Wattpad, my style was a bit too simple (my style still is to be honest). At least this is how I felt when I initially decided to refresh it- what do you guys think? 

I recommend looking and following various accounts that you admire the style of for inspiration- just don't plagiarise! Make sure your work is different enough that it becomes its own thing. 

This theme was somewhat an adaptation of the last- hence the similar colours. The main different was that this time the covers were a little bit more complex and that my profile picture and banner had a little bit more going on. I still like this theme, hence why I still use the template created during this era.

And now- onto the my current theme! This was the first time I changed it up purely for fun rather than being unhappy with the existing theme. I decided that for a new year I wanted a new look. I also created a banner for a story and thought it would make a nice theme, so for that reason I will list the banner first and then the theme to show how it got translated.

For this theme I took the motifs used in the banner to create the covers. So I used the same fonts, background and border. I was lucky that my use of greyscale with red eyes for the characters allowed for any character to fit into the theme. I was also happy to bring some colour to my account as I've had such dark themes for a while. 

So that is my story and journey for creating themes! The general tips I learned were:

1. Create a theme that ensures that characters fit into the palette. The two easiest ways to do this are to either use grey scale or low saturation. If you were to have a greyscale background you could also get away with it. I do know some people make character's colours work and don't have to make it greyscale, but if you are like me, this is a cheat method.

2. Keep it simple. I have made various mock up themes as can be seen on my portfolio and store, but it is often difficult to maintain certain designs across various titles and characters (also I recommend using similar titles for your books, e.g. one word like flames, water, fear etc. this will make fitting the text in much easier than if you have one book called Egg and another called That Time I was Reincarnated into a Mega Super Shapeshifting Demon Killer 3000). I found this problem when I tried to use one of my favourite mock up themes as my actual theme. The theme was created by using colours from the character it was originally designed for and it worked well for characters within that series but looked weird with anything else. I even tried adjusting the colours slightly, but it still wasn't enough to salvage the theme and make it work for me. 

Keeping it simple also means that less needs to be adjusted for each individual cover, which is ideal if you have lots of books to adjust each time.

3. Keep trying! It can be daunting seeing all these amazing accounts out there with their fancy themes that look amazing every time. If you keep at it, in time you will get better!

That's it for this tutorial! So, any questions?