Bonus Info • Lore • Development Process
Where It All Started
The story began with me playing Minecraft and my growing annoyance with the never ending game of hide and seek with the item tooltips of the specific enchanted books I was looking for. Every time, opening a chest meant being forced to play the game of memorising cards, seeing if you still remember the positions of all the books in the chest, and failing meant yet another search for the silly tooltip. The solution was either to install mods or learn speed reading.
What Sparked My Initiative
I installed the first resource pack, and the required mods. Now, all books looked different from one another. But ironically, a new problem emerged. You could barely tell what the new textures were even supposed to mean in the first place. Colors for the sake of colors, metal platings, arbitrary symbols, particle effects all around, different glows, engravings, not anti-aliased pixel art, and well, in cases where pixel art was understandable, it just looked bad. Often there was so much going on with the "art" that you almost couldn't tell there was still a book underneath. And so, it was the memorisation game all over again, but this time, it was the meaning of the arbitrary textures you had to memorise. So I downloaded an another pack, and then another, and another... and all of them were mediocre to say the least. I was fed up with all of them, and with the fact that a couple of them had had hundreds of thousands of downloads. I was mad that something this simple, with designs seemingly so obvious to come up with & use for this kind of resource pack hadn't been done by anyone yet. So basically, I just gave up on other people to deliver, and decided to create my own designs. The proper way.
General Design Philosophy
Before I list out all of the specifics, I will establish the general concept. Every single texture I was conceptualising was questioned whether it would make sense if it existed in real life, and by that, I don't mean in our reality, but in something like the Minecraft Movie kind of reality. Where, (unlike in the game) illogical textures aren't simply blindly accepted, because "we're in a video game", and at the same time, they are allowed to use some fantasy logic; Where it simply doesn't make sense for the glyphs to stick out of the book cover, like some kind of a UI element, but it is fine for the book to be more than just a stack of paper with a leather cover, and to possess some magical properties (like the Soul Speed book, having souls emerge from it).
In my methodology, I stuck to my self-established rules, which dictated what was and wasn't graphically acceptable, which helped the project retain its high standard (I think). I also came up with criteria that took into consideration differently experienced users, which helped me judge if the texture was conveying the right message effectively or not.
Design Rules & Visual Guidelines
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Elements that wouldn't make sense if they had to become physical are not allowed.
- elements like floating numbers, roman numerals or health bars
- designs that would make the book unreadable, impossible to open, or its contents to be destroyed (books on fire, books turning into dust, pierced through books)
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All symbolism has to come from Minecraft.
No symbols like hand-cuffs, guns, dynamite sticks, bombs, alphabet, numbers, christian crosses, punching gloves, magnifying glass, irl animals, etc. No references to human culture, even if the symbolism is widely recognizable. All of the meaning conveyed through the art must stem from Minecraft mechanics and knowledge about it, and if you don't draw the connections and fail to understand it, that's on you and your lack of knowledge about the game, not your unfamiliarity with the pop culture or unrelated symbolism.
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A villager must be considered the original designer.
We can say that villagers are capable of creating basically every enchanted book in the game. This means they firstly possess knowledge about a specific magical spell. Then, they write down this knowledge, and become literal authors of these books — book covers included. This rule is sort of analogical to the previous one and derives from it, but it makes these book designs so much more embedded in Minecraft's world.
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The design has to be within the book cover.
Nothing can stick out. No overly long arrows or swords, no making anything too big just because it's impossible for you to draw it in a small enough scale. Deal with it, or come up with some other concept. This has some exceptions, for example with books being overgrown with something, because it still makes sense fantasy-wise, and it also doesn't stop the book from being opened (vines can be shred).
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Symbols must be aligned with the books' angled 30° rotation.
The best example is the creeper face on the Blast Protection book. I could've made it aligned with the pixel grid, but after a couple of attempts, I managed to make it look good enough in the rotated version.
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Book color that's not brown must be justified.
I aimed for the books to not be brown only if it improved their recognizability and/ or made them easier to understand. I wanted to avoid color coding the enchantments, because it would once again introduce the user to the game of memorisation — as in which color corresponds to what. The proper use of this solution is seen in the trident-exclusive enchantments. For example, for the Frost Walker, I could've technically made a brown book with a snowflake, but turning it into ice does make things more clear. Bane of Arthropods matches the spider's color scheme. Breach, in addition to needing to be differentiated from Protection, remains consistent with Wind Burst, further hinting that it's used with the Mace.
Criteria for Texture Subjects & Testing Efficacy of the Design
In my designs, I tried creating textures which required zero, or as little thinking as possible in order to be understood. I tried to convey as little ambiguity as possible, so that the player's first connection in mind — between the book texture and the inferred magical result — would be the correct one, confirming the item's actual function.
Before committing to an idea, I would check if it was meeting certain conditions, and I would verify whether a potential user could answer specific questions about it.
It takes 2 target audiences into account:
- "pro" – players who have extensive knowledge about all Minecraft's mechanics
- "noob" – people who are just beginning discovering Minecraft's systems and logic
There are 2 stages of interaction with the items in game:
- seeing the texture, but not yet seeing & knowing its name
- knowing the texture and its name after hovering the cursor over it
Remembering that, I check if the player can answer these questions:
- What is the symbol supposed to be?
- What might be the enchantment's name, judging by the texture? (Considering I know all of the names)
- If it's my first time seeing the texture and its name, not knowing what the enchantment does, can I deduce what it might do?
- To which tool or part of armor might it be applied to?
These 3 pieces of information:
- enchantment's name
- resulting in-game effect behavior
- and appearance/ texture
are the main pillars, which tell you if your design is effective. If the player only possesses 2 pieces of information, or just one, you need to make sure they can deduce and find a connection to the 2nd and 3rd one by themselves. The 4th, ghost-pillar of "what's the target tool for this enchantment?" derives from the texture and name parts.
That's the purpose of the design rules and strict guidelines for the aesthetic side of the project — to ensure they are legible and require no effort to identify.
The thing is, you only control 1 of these 3 aspects: what the item looks like. Not the enchantment's weird name, nor how the in-game mechanics are actually affected.
Your texture needs to complement the scraps of information that you as an artist have been given, with the goal of bringing these 3 ambiguous concepts into a single idea with one intended meaning. Only in unison can they work as an effective design.
Examples:
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The player knows there is an enchantment that makes swords light things on fire, but he doesn't know what it's called or what its texture might look like. He finds two names: Fire Aspect and Flame. He doesn't know which is the correct one, but he looks at the texture and sees a flaming sword, and a bow with a flaming arrow. He figures out its the sword one. Now he knows a) what the enchantment does, b) what it's called, and c) what it looks like.
Multiple Enchantments on a Single Book
Each enchantment is ranked within a hierarchy of significance.
When an enchanted book contains two or more enchantments, the texture of an enchantment ranked higher than the other ones is displayed. Give feedback
(This functionality only regards the native version. OptiFine, CIT Resewn, and Variants-CIT have their own rankings, it seems.)
List
(Lunge is between Aqua Affinity and Sharpness)
History of the Development Process
The draft of the first texture was created in August 2024, and the official publication of the finished project happened 7 months later, in March 2025. This project definitely humbled me with the amount of time it proved it required for completion. I was expecting to have it fully done within 2 or 3 weeks. If only I knew how much work I had signed myself up for...
I'm glad I knew about Photopea.com, because without it, the whole creative process would've been way harder, and would've taken way longer. The effects I was able to achieve wouldn't be possible without this website's arsenal of features.
And so, the battle began. I generated a flat world, built a wall with forty something item frames, and watched, as I started filling them with next semi-finished textures. Few days I managed to design 2 or 3 textures from the ground up, but most of the remaining time one additional texture would take me a couple of days to iron out. I placed blocks and spawned mobs to reference the textures. I've set up and killed many librarians, just to see how the books would look in different UIs. I used invisible item frames on different shades of backgrounds to compare the contrasts. In photoshop, I would try one iteration, save it, rename the old one, and refresh the game. Iterate, save, rename, refresh, and do it for hours. The F3+T keys must have been pressed a couple of thousand of times throughout the entire period.
I have put hundreds and hundreds of hours into this project. The amount of iterations of every version and every concept of the texture is way above a thousand. I would work on them until late nights, tweaking brightness, saturation and hue of every single pixel there was, constantly nudging the adjustment sliders in photoshop, until everything felt right. I would scour the entire creative inventory for inspiration for the textures. There were times I would sit on a couch and stare into a wall, walk around the house, or lay in bed at night, trying to remember all of Minecraft's weird mechanics, thinking of how they could imply my intended meaning of the texture; thinking of different concepts, and contemplating whether they would make sense. For some of them I still haven't figured out a design I would be happy with, but I had to settle, so the pack could release. Sometimes, I would wake up in the morning and boot up the pc, because the previous night I had thought of something great. Some of the textures I dreaded to the very end, until I couldn't ignore them any more. The actual development spanned out only across 6 months, because I had to take a break for one month, after I became disgusted with the whole project.
But then, in January, Mojang released a new snapshot — 25w04a, and with it, new resource pack functionality, allowing custom textures based on stored item components. This gave me a kick of motivation. Up until that point, I had been working on this pack solely out of my own will to create something I wished had existed. But now, I felt like I had a chance of competing with other pack creators, because I could pair the publication of my own take on the matter with shipping it already in compatibility with the newest version of Minecraft, and be one of the first ones to make it work without mods. At that time, the project had been sitting around with about 80% of art done for many weeks. So I had 2 months to finish the hardest textures to design, and not make their appearance be devoid of any logic, and learn the syntax of writing data component functions, without much well-explained documentation, except for minecraft wiki, which is a never ending sea of hyperlinks. Fortunately, I had some earlier experience with making models for resource packs.
All Textures Explained
Now here's some backstory, concept and the thought process behind every texture, in an (almost) alphabetical order:
Respiration
This was the first texture I designed, and is probably my favorite. The connection between the turtle shell and the ability of breathing underwater occurred to me pretty easily. Other people would just make a book with bubbles, or a small turtle helmet icon, but I'm surprised no one else came up with my design. A reference to a conduit was also considered, but I think nothing beats the current version. I also think that the turtle shell could theoretically be an implication that the enchantment is meant to be applied to helmets, because the only thing turtle shells are used for are turtle helmets, but I know that it's a bit of a stretch. The bubbles are a cherry on top, referencing the hotbar elements, making it clearer than ever to understand.
I changed the animation in the 2.0 update. I had this idea of the book opening and bubbles coming from inside, kind of like these clams from SpongeBob. I REALLY hope it's not distracting. You can disable the animation using Respackopts or by editing the files.
Aqua Affinity
This one is weird. It works like the haste effect. The effect is observed with tools and their mining speed, but the enchantment is intended for helmets. I was considering a watery theme with a pickaxe symbol, but then I realised that someone could mistake it for a tool-enchantment, so I made it consistent with Respiration. I was considering to add bubbles, but realised that they wouldn't really relate to the enchantment's effect.
Bane of Arthropods
Initially I was trying different cobweb designs with a spider on top, but the resolution was too small to make it recognizable and clear enough, so I opted for a bug, which technically only has 6 legs, unlike spiders, but it's recognizable enough. It was supposed to be a red book with a black spider, but one user preferred the inverted version, because it reminded them of Miles Morales from the Spider-Verse, and I liked that reference, so I kept it that way.
Blast Protection
I firstly tried a TNT design, but it was giving me the wrong vibe from. I figured TNT is associated with destruction of the environment more than with the blast effect itself. Whereas creepers remind you of the life-threatning blast damage, with the block destruction being an afterthought after having died. I wanted to do something different than everybody else, but sometimes the most obvious design is the best one. I made it angled by 30°, because I thought it would have been dumb to have a book with a twisted cover design for no reason (in real life). It took a few tries, but I think it looks acceptable.
Breach
Future Development
As for now, I'm maintaining the resource pack, listening to all of the criticism and suggestions, hoping to make it even better than it already is. Every time Mojang adds a new enchantment, I will try to be there to come up with something polished. Currently, I have no plans for creating mod compatibilities.
Thank you for downloading and sharing my project, it makes me very proud.
15 XII 2025
