At the beginning of this
module I was pretty overwhelmed with the amount of amazing briefs that we were
given to choose from. It was quite a challenge for me to choose which one I
wanted to do, so I thought really hard about what will benefit me most in terms
of experience and opportunities that I could gain from it. I narrowed it down
to the traveling man zine and the Penguin book cover competition briefs. After
a lot of thought I decided that I can always work on zines and self publish
them in my own time where as the penguin competition only comes around once a
year, plus its only for students to enter meaning that when I leave university
I cant enter it and I might as well make the most of it whilst I can. So in the
end I decided to go ahead with the Penguin book cover competition. One thing
that helped me to decide to do the penguin brief was the opportunities you
could gain from winning the it or even getting short listed because it would
definitely get you noticed within the industry. I also thought that I
would like experience in designing a book cover as I really love to read and it
would be good to work alongside books in some way, in the future.
When I started to look more
into the brief, the next thing to do was choose two from the three books to
design a cover for. The three choices were: Oranges are not the only fruit,
Freakanomics and Carrie's War. I decided quite quickly to do Carries War (the
children's book) and Oranges are not the only fruit (the adult non-fiction
book) because these were the two novel style books and I thought that I might
enjoy reading the books anyway. Ill start with evaluating my Carries War book
cover because that’s where I began. I started off reading the book pretty
quickly, I soon discovered that the book was about evacuated children in World
War 2. Although I enjoyed the book and it brought me back in time feel as
though the story definitely lacked a gripping storyline especially for a
children's book. All of the previous covers that I looked at didn't really
represent the story at all because they showed scenes of war and destruction in
London where none of that happened within the book. After reading the story it struck
me that it was going to be hard to make such an empty story look exiting for
children and make them want to pick it up off the shelves. Then it hit me, I
thought why not just create the creepy woods that the children walk through
throughout the story because that was the main part of the story that had a lot
of description.
I started out with a few
sketches of how I imagined the cover in my head and thought it would be
appropriate to include the two main characters and the house that the children
are going to (Hepsibah's House.) I wanted to create a woodland scene with lots
of depth, my idea was that this would draw children looking in the bookshop
into the scene and make them want to read the book. To make the image look
really interesting and unique I decided to take my illustrations to a 3D
medium. I have done this before and I really liked the look that it gave but it
wasn't finished to that high of a standard so I thought that I could really
push this technique and really improve it I looked at a few different artists
for inspiration such as Hari and Deeppiti, they were a big influence. I then
created illustrations of the trees and people that I wanted to make the scene
from and I cut out a tester using cartridge paper and it took me a pretty long
time to get all of the intricate detail that I wanted in the trees, after
realising how long this was going to take I thought about my options. I was
then given the idea to try out using the laser cutter. I really liked the idea
of using it and was really exited to learn a new tool that I could use to
create 3D illustrations. I then created my illustration outlines digitally
using Adobe Illustrator. I then booked a session to use the laser cutter and
the technician helped me to achieve what I wanted. I really, really love the
finish that the laser cutter gives and it helped push my design to another
level I was very pleased with my outcome. I wasn't planning for it but the
laser cutter left slight scorch marks around the edge of the cuts and I really
liked the colouring that it made on the white mount board it added real
character. The look of the scorch marks also referenced war time really well
because there will have been a lot of destruction and devastation from bombs
and of course fire so there would have been a lot of scorched debris around at
this time in history.
After using the laser
cutter the next challenge for me to conquer was for me to photograph the scenes
to create the final images. This was by far one of the hardest points of
creating this book cover. As I don't have that much experience with photography
or lighting it was very hard to work out the best way to light the scene. After
a lot of trial and error and some help from the photography tutors we finally
figured out the best lighting angles, and it took a while but in the end we got
the perfect shots. I think when we got the lighting right it really transformed
it to a magical scene and drew you in. This is exactly what I wanted. If I was
to have any criticisms it would be that the photograph on the front cover was
lit slightly differently than the front because it was harder to lighting right
as a lot of shadows were being cast onto the house. I am still really pleased
with the result though. After deciding on the two final images I then took them
to Photoshop to edit the levels and the hue/saturation. I wanted to make the
dark bits slightly darker and the light parts lighter, I did this by editing
the levels. I then added a warm orangey/yellow hue to the whole image to make
it look more inviting and warm. I think this really helped the image to look
more like a children's book because it had a nice nostalgic look to it, It
reminded me a bit of when you think of a happy memory and in your head the
image has a whole warm glow to it.
Finally I added the Title, author
name, Blurb and spine to the book design in Photoshop. I feel as though the
front cover looked really nice and the title and author really completed the
look of the front cover. I then added the blurb, this was also laser cut but it
was engraved into a square piece of mount board rather than fully cut out of
it. I really liked the look of the laser cut blurb but i'm not too sure how
well it worked on the back of the book because it was very square and it was
covering up a lot of detail of the trees. I tried other ways of placing the
blurb and I tried a few ways of improving the look of it like changing the
transparency and size of it, I even tried making it look like it was amongst
the trees but a lot of the text was not readable. I think I will just have to
deal with the way that it looks because a blurb is a very necessary part of a
book back, even of its not the best designed part its one of the most important
elements so I feel that its not that big of a deal that it stands out quite a
bit because it does its job.
Overall I am really pleased
with how this book design has turned out, I was not too sure initially how good
I would be at creating a book cover that worked with the story but I feel that I
really have. Its hard to tell if it will be what the judges are looking for but
I certainly think it will be unique against other entries so it will hopefully
catch a few eyes. If I was to do this project the only thing that I would
change is the slight issue with the blurb on the back of the book, I think I
would plan for it to fit better within the image. Other than that I feel as
though I have completed this module to a pretty high standard with no real
major issues. I even feel as though my time management has even improved as I
have finished everything with a little bit of time left to tweak things as
opposed to working right up to the deadline. I also managed to complete it
whilst keeping on top of all my other written work, which I am quite proud of.
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