[Tex/LaTex] Book cover, integration multilayered equations. (Suggestions?)

book-designtikz-pgftitles

I am sort of writing a compendium about integration, everyhting from basic substitutions, to contour integrals, Gamma, beta integrals and so forth.

I feel that no standard frontcase suffices and I therefore think that the best solution for a bookcover would be using tikz (correct?)

I was thinking about tinting the page slightly gray. And making it similar to the headliner here. Some centered text, and then some faded multilayered equations and images

My idea for a bookcase

Now, the equations should be a mixture between integrals, and images. Things like

Navier stokes Equation

Sphere

Error integral

Long Equation

Gaussian integral

Complex integral 1

enter image description here

One of my favourite integrals

Another one of my favourite integrals

enter image description here

My question is, how would one go about creating such a titlepage? My problem is adding the multilayered equations, in different shades.

(If someone has some arguments or ideas for a better frontpage, I am all ears.)

Best Answer

There has been a related (but less specific) question a couple of days ago: Resources for title page and front matter design, where I suggested the somewhat prosaic approach: Do not use LaTeX for the cover, but some good vector drawing program. Export it to PDF and employ pdfpages, \includegraphics or pdftk to add it to the document.

I think, your cover is a perfect showcase for this approach:

  • It is just a one-time thing!
  • You are seeking a very visual, arty design. Crafting it will probably be a process of visual trial-and-error with many iterations, until you are satisfied.

Doing this with LaTeX / TikZ might be fun, but it certainly will be an enormous time sink: I am a big fan of "use the right tool for the task"; if the task is mostly about visual effects and only marginally about structured content, I would say that a visual tool is better suited than LaTeX.

As your cover involves many formulas, for which typesetting LaTeX is just great, I would probably go for a mixture:

  1. Use LaTeX to produce the "basic elements" of your cover, that is, the title, equations, graphs, symbols, whatever. (Use the standalone class or, if you are on a Mac, a tool like LaTeXiT to transform them into PDF or EPS images.)
  2. Use a good vector drawing program (Inkscape, Illustrator) to layout, blend, shade, ... these elements in order to craft the resulting cover page.
Related Question