Alongside creating the carries war book cover I began to read and
develop ideas for the book Oranges are not the only fruit. When I was reading
this book not one single image stood out to me that would work well on a book
cover because there were so many topics and themes covered in the book. The
main themes are religion and lesbian love but alongside this there are a lot of
stories and bible verses. Because no images came into my mind I started to
sketch lots of different thumbnails out to see what came from it. This proved
very beneficial as it helped me to decide what I liked the look of most.
I started off by creating a silhouette style image using my own
profile for the girl head. I then added the title of the book within
the silhouette, I think the design was okay but nothing really special.
After completing this cover I realised that this cover idea was very similar to
the cover for ' The colour Purple,' another lesbian love story, I would not be
able to use something so similar to something that already existed. I am glad
this happened because it allowed me to think more and expend my ideas and
designs. I went back to my thumbnails and had a look through the other
ideas that I had, I saw a sketch of a girl at the bottom of the page and the title
above her head as if it was her thoughts. I really liked this idea but my next
decision was to choose the style that I wanted to create the book cover in. At
this point, I don't really know why but the Eleanor and Park book cover popped
into my head and it gave me the idea to create a really modern book cover for a
quite old dated story, a similar thing to what the Eleanor and Park book cover
did. I thought that tis idea would attract a new more young audience to the
book, a market that usually wouldn't even think to pick this book up. I thought
it would be a good idea to refresh the book and bring it into this age.
I then started on designs. As the brief specified a strong use of
typography I decided to make this the focal point of the book I wanted to create
a really nice quirky hand written title for the book. I’m not too great with
digital fonts so I thought I would do what I know and just draw the letters. I
kept it in quite a loose style so it looks as if someone could have doodled it
down onto paper because there are a lot of notes that get written throughout
the book and I feel as though this fits with the story. I also decided to have
the books background as lined paper so it really looked like a note. I am
pleased with how the text turned out considering I don't think I'm that good at
typography. I then drew the design for the girl at the bottom of the page, I
wanted her to look sad because throughout the book that seems to be the feeling
that she feels the most. I decided on a simple line drawing to keep the design
clean, simple and modern. After scanning it in and putting it on Photoshop I
decided to colour the hair and eyebrows with a light orange to reference to the
title and the oranges from the story.
I then added all of the digital text such as the author name and
quote. I put the authors name in a band the same colour as the girl’s hair, I
think this contained the name nicely and brought the image together and
balanced it out so it was no longer bottom heavy. I continued the orange band
onto the spine and the back page. I think this makes the back and front of the
book work together as a cohesive piece. I decided to use my hand writing for
the blurb so that again it looked like a note that someone had written. I think
that it balanced out the use of digital and hand written text nicely making it
look professional as opposed to a hand made DIY book cover. After adding all of
the text to the back cover I decided that it did feel a bit plain and it
needed something extra. I decided to then add some doodle style motifs
referencing themes in the book, I decided to keep them in the orange accent
colour that I used throughout the design.
Overall I am
really pleased with how this book cover turned out because I think it looks
really modern and quirky and I would probably pick it up if I saw it on a
bookshelf. I also really like the illustration style, I would like to play
around with this style a lot more in the future. I feel as though it is a real risk for me to enter this as
a cover as it is so modern for a story set in the 60's but who knows it could
really work as a re brand of the story and bring it into the modern day. I
think that a cover like this would really attract a new audience to the book.
If I was to re do this project I think that I would maybe spend a little bit
more time making sure everything is tidied up and polished to an even higher
standard But I am quite pleased with how professionally it has came out
compared to previous projects. Personally I really think that I am improving
with creating a more professional finish compared to last year, I think that I
can keep up with this and be even more meticulous to create projects with the
an even higher standard in the future.
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