Penguin Random House

Book photo generator

Our team was responsible for creating artwork and photos for penguin random house's social media posts. Given the fast moving nature of social media, we would regularly recieve urgent, last minute requests to photograph a particular book. The social media managers weren't getting the artwork quickly enough, and the design team were struggling with quick turnaround times.

I photographed a series of 60 blank paperback & hardback books in common settings and cropped the images to standard social media sizes. I then built an online tool using php & imagemagick to fetch the cover image from our server, render it directly onto these photos and return a high resolution jpg.

Step 1

Each book has a unique ISBN code. The social media manager grabs the ISBN from our website and paste it into the online tool

Step 2

They pick a photo of a book or eReader and hit 'Create Photo'

Step 3

They download a high res photo ready for upload to facebook or twitter