Book cover inspiration? - Oranges are not the only fruit

Recently iv'e been looking for ideas and inspiration for the cover of 'Oranges are not the only fruit' because, although there is a lot of information and different themes in the book I wasn't getting many ideas or imagery for a cover design. I have been keeping an eye out and looking all over for some influences, here are a range of things that I have found around that have given me ideas. Hopefully this blog post will help me sort out the ideas that I have and help me to realise what ideas that I like the best.  

 I came across this pantone puzzle book whilst looking on the internet, I really liked how on the right hand page had a shape made out of block colour and a pattern shining through behind it. I thought this style would look great as a simplistic cover and it would also work well because I could take great inspiration from 1960's patterns as thats when the book is set. it would also be quite fitting if I used the shape of an orange for the cut out, as the book mentions oranges a lot, although the title suggests that it doesn't. I might try out a cover in this style after doing some thumbnails.  

Another image that gave me a good idea is a book cover that already exists by Jamie Keenan, it uses a pretty rough pen drawing but the design is pulled together by a professional, clean, digital font. I really like the way the image is drawn on lined notebook paper as opposed to plain white.  I think that something with a similar idea to this would work for 'Oranges are not the only fruit' as the mother in the story writes notes a lot. I think it would work to create a sort of doodle page but using themes from the book for doodles for example a cross, oranges, a bible ect.   

Whilst I was researching paper cutting for my other book cover, I came across this image. It really sparked an idea to create something using an orange shape with the title cut out of the paper and some really effective lighting. I think I could try this out and it could look really effective whilst remaining simple and clean. 

The last thing that has really inspired me lately is a video for the song Anclebiters by Paramore. I spotted this video out of the corner of my eye because it looked so pretty. It was created by an artist/ illustrator/animator called Jordan Bruner. I really love the style and colours that are used, they are very eye catching. I think that a book cover with a similar vibe to this video would create a very modern twist on the book. this could be a good idea to look into as I feel this would attract a more modern audience to this classic book. 

I will now create some thumbnails using these images as inspiration and see how my ideas develop. I might work on a few different covers to see what progresses best. 

Using the laser cutter

As I had created all of my designs and cut them out by hand previously to practice, I discovered that it would take me a very long time to cut out everything that I needed by hand and I wouldn't be able to get it done in time to a very high professional standard. Because of this I decided to look into ways that I could fix this and decided that trying out a laser cutter would be my best option. I tracked down the laser cutter in uni and got some help from an experienced technician. He told me to make all of the shapes that I wanted cutting out in illustrator and told me the specifications to save all of the lines as. These are some of the the templates that I made for the laser cutter. 

  

When I went to use the laser cutter, I tried out a different things for example I tried putting paper on top of my mount board to reduce the scorching that the laser leaves as it was not my original intention to have scorch marks. The paper technique didn't reduce the scorching much. But I decided after seeing the final cutting that I really liked the effect that the scorching gives as it adds much more character to the overall image and it will hopefully make the final image look slightly aged to fit in more with the time period that the book is set in. Here are a few of the pieces from the laser cutter they are not at all in the final composition, I just arranged them in a random order, I will upload better images of all of my laser cuttings on a different post. 

   Overall I found the laser cutter really helpful and although I was heavily assisted, it seemed quite simple to use. I would love to use this technique in the future as I really enjoyed the process and I can see good potential to make lots of different products with the aid of this technology. 

Artist research: Andrea Dezsö

Whilst looking through the book Paper Craft 2 I came across an artist called Andrea Dezsö she is an artist that works across a huge range of media's. some of her paper cut work uses a similar idea to Hari and Deepeti in the way that the artist forms nicely lit silhouette scenes but instead of keeping the scene plain white, and relying on shadows to create the full effect, she uses coloured paper to add different moods and atmospheres to her images. I love the effect that this gives to her work and makes the worlds look so interesting, they really do draw you into them. 
I think for my Carries war book cover I am going to stick with an all white scene for now to see how that looks, I might even experiment with different coloured lighting effects. but the coloured paper idea is definitely something to consider and try out, I might even utilise this idea for my oranges are not the only fruit book cover. 

Oranges are not the only fruit

For my second book cover design I have chosen to illustrate a cover for Oranges are not the only fruit because it is a fiction book and I feel like it will be easier for me to read that rather than freakanomics although that does sound interesting too. I feel as though I can get more information and symbolism from a fiction book because it has a fully developed story with lots of different characters and themes. As a starting point I thought I would have a look at previous book covers that have been designed for this book. My next step is to read the book and think about what id like to create for the cover it shouldn't take me to long to read so I can start on my concepts quite soon.   

 Im not to keen on the above cover, personally i'm not too fond of the illustrative style but there are a few other things that I don't think work that well. For example the border is very strange for a book cover because it just goes down one side of the image, and I feel although the text is slightly boring and harsh against the illustration that has barely any black in it. 

 I think the above cover is quite nice in the way that it gives a vintage classic a modern look. The quality of the drawing looks modern and the fact that the character has tattoo's really brings it into this day in age because when the book was set tattoo's would have been very taboo. The bright use of Orange against the washed out drawing gives the cover a really eye catching pop as well.  

 I do like the above cover but I think that compared to the one above it, it is not as strong of an image, I think this is because it is less focused compared to the other cover and I think the negative space at the top of the page makes the image look un balanced. I know that there is text there but I think if it was re arranged a bit it would work better. 

In my opinion this is the strongest cover I think its because it is very unique compared to all of the other covers. I like the more simplistic look and the composition of the text and image, I think they work well together. I also really like the colours that have been used in this cover because I think that the orange bible really stands out against the blocky black. 

Overall I have concluded that i like the more modern looking covers so I would like to go down the route of creating a more modern looking cover rather than a cover that represents the time period that the book was written in. 

Thumbnails

I did some quick sketches of cover variations, they're not very detailed as they are just thumbnails but they give me an idea of how the compositions will look in my head. Drawing out my ideas also helped me realise what would work best where. I realised that I would have to think about the typography placement a lot so it helped me to visualise that as well.
I think I am going to work on and develop the first thumb nail as I think it is the most visually interesting. If that doesn't work out I have a few other designs that I can develop instead.