Activity pages

I created activity pages that are related to all of the artists in the book. These pages will go in after the fact pages. 

Oranges are not the only fruit Title typography

For this cover I wanted to use a hand written style for the title of the book, I decided this because im not that good at digital typography and knowing what looks good where and when I just write it myself things turn out looking a lot better. I also thought this would look a bit more unique and interesting compared to a standard digital font. I just began randomly scrawling the words from the title onto a piece of scrap paper. I then decided which style of lettering that I liked for which words. When I had decided on my favourites and the order that they should go in, I re drew them the way that I wanted them on the page. I then scanned them in so I could compose the cover digitally. The paper had a few shadows on when I had scanned it so I am going to scan in a new piece of paper and move the text onto the new paper background. I really like how it is looking so far, the next step is to add the illustration of  the girl to the bottom of the page, the author name  and any text has to go on the front. 

Typography

I am going to do a lot more research into typography but for a starting point i thought i would type in 1940's fonts into google and i found a website called my fonts, it was quite helpful because you can search fonts by decade. A lot of different fonts came up for the 40's and they might not be historically accurate but they resemble and relate to fonts that might have been used in the 40's, some are modern and some are more old fashioned. It gave me a bit of help and ideas anyway, now I can build my research up from here and do more research on appropriate typography.   

Book cover research

I thought I would have a look at some of my favourite book covers from the books that I own and find out a bit about who created them and why I like them. When I went to my book shelf there were a few that really stood out to me straight away so I thought I would write about them. 

'The book of lost things' has a book cover designed by Rob Ryan, an artist known throughout the world for his paper cut art. This book cover is vital to my research because it is done using the medium that I want to use to create my book cover. I love the colours and composition that has been used, I think it really makes the book stand out with the use of bright red for the background. I also like the subtle bits of imagery such as the keys and the old man used throughout the cover that give hints to things in the book. the cover doesn't give any of the story away and makes it look mysterious which makes me want to read it more. It also has a strong use of typography which is what the penguin brief asks for so this book cover has helped me out in terms of ideas for the typography. 

'The girl who saved the king of Sweden' and 'The 100 year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared' are two very similar book covers that were created by Jonathan Pelham, a book cover designer from London. These books were both written by the same author and thats why they have the same style design. Although these book covers aren't created using paper cut I still think they look like they could have been because they both use very blocky colours. Although these covers mainly use simple shapes to make up the images they still maintain a very illustrative look. I think that my favourite things about these covers are the bright eye catching colours that are used and how the typography is used, these books both have a lot of text on the front but the way that it has been handled doesn't make it overpowering at all. looking at this book cover might help me if I decided to do a book cover for 'Oranges are not the only fruit' as that has quite a long title. 

The last book cover that really caught my was 'Mr Penumbras 24 hour bookstore' designed by Adam Simpson, It has a very graphic cover that focuses a lot on the typography but it cleverly incorporates imagery linking to the story in the book. I think that this book does a really good job of subtly liking the cover to the story as the cover is very modern and looks computer generated whilst still using slightly older colours, and the story incorporates both an old traditional book shop and very modern technology. I think it is the style and boldness of the imagery that attracts me to this book cover. The colours are also very bold and striking so that draws mw in a lot as well.  I would like to use this book cover for colour inspiration as they work quite well as modern retro colours. 

 Overall looking at these book covers has helped me to realise what I like in a book cover and I have noticed that they all have a strong use of colour and especially typography. This is something I am going to try and research and learn about because typography is not my strong point but I really love how it looks and i'm really interested in it.   

Typography development

As I want to include the title of the album and the artist name on the front of the CD and poster I decided to look into different fonts to get an idea of what I think will work best for my design. I used a website called Da Font to look at different styles and I have picked a few out that i think will work well and a few that I hope to stay away from so that I definitely know what i like. The fonts that I like that will inspire my own typography that I will create for the CD and poster designs.  For the samples i used the word Aventine because thats the . 

The first font that caught my eye is called Mademoiselle Camille and I like how delicate and girly that it is, I think the swashes on the letter A add a really nice elegant feel to it. I think this font might be a bit overpowering for the imagery of my design but I can look at this font and take small elements for example the thin italic lines as inspiration. 

This is an example of a font that i don't think will work with my design, It is called 'Mf Be Yourself'. The reason I don't think this font would fit my design it because it is too bold and striking to fit in with the calm elegant image that I want to get across. I also don't really like how the letters look slightly childish, this style of font would work great for a primary school leaflet but not for the purpose that i want. 

Below is an example of a font that i think would work quite well with my design it is called 'Coalhand Luke.' I like it because it looks very hand written and it is easy to read. I also think the way the letters are quire round rather than sharp looks really nice as if the text naturally flows together. The main thing that I don't like about this font is that it doesn't have capital letters it just has a lower case letter but a bit bigger than usual. If I was to use this font to base my own off I would create real capital letters. 

I don't think that I would chose a font like the one below 'Signerica' because it is quite hard to read but I do really like the delicate line quality that it has to it. This style of font looks very hand written and personal and I think the feel that it gives is really pretty. If I could take influence from this font but make it a bit more clear to read i feel like it would be the perfect font to use. 

I will take inspiration and ideas from all of the fonts that i like and try to combine them in to a type face that will work perfectly with my design. my next step is to go ahead and create my own font and try it out with my cover design.