Judge a Book by its Cover

Brief

• Create a book cover using a book from the library
• Design project
• Media, process, application 

• What is it about?
• What are the themes?

Concept motifs made visual through image making.

• How do you make these things visual?
• How do you communicate their meaning?
• How do you design them across the cover, spine and back of a physical book?
• How do you draw someone's attention?

Begin with an idea in mind rather than looking at a picture.

Think about the page, scale, layout, repetition and media of the design.

Experiment with type.

• Title on the front
• Title, author and library number on the spine

Roughs

Why are these polar bears wearing trainers?

It's because they're cool.

Using my sketchbook to begin creating character designs.

The furby pencils are my favourite medium to work in when creating quick sketches as they are simple to create tonal value to simplistic designs.

I particularly like the designs that are coloured in as I enjoy creating pieces with minimal outline.

I need to continue my character development throughout my roughs as well as using the dimensions for the book cover to work on how the layout will work.

I prefer the characters that have been coloured with minimal outlines with the 'cool' elements drawn over the top.

I need to work on drawing motorbikes.

Should I make the bikes more complex to counteract with the simplicity of the polar bear?

Creating the rough designs of the book covers has proven difficult because of the layout of the book being such a square form.

I want the front and the back of the book cover to connect in some shape of form but the compositions I have created so far seem to make it impossible to happen.

Feedback Response 

Evaluating and reflecting on my own work has helped to construct a better idea for a final piece which will mean I will use a more digital approach.

Which I dislike.

However it involves using analogue approaches as well.

This needs to be tested in my book to see if it will work as a final idea.

How many ways could I make a polar bear cool apart from sunglasses and leather jackets?

I intend on looking further into different subcultures from the past to present day that are considered 'cool'. 

From hippies to the mafia.

Final Response

I moved to the more digital approach to create the final piece. 

I am happy with the process I have chosen to create my final book cover design as using a digital approach rather than my original hand drawn roughs seems to create a more crisp edge to the piece.

I practiced the idea by printing the design and quickly drawing the cool elements although it printed at the wrong size making it too big to fit around the book.

Also the hand drawn designs on the practice book didn't all look completely up to standard when placed on the image. 

For my final piece I made sure it was set to the correct size before printing and altered some of the hand drawn 'cool' elements so that they look better on the cover when its folded.

Although the brief allowed us to use an unlimited amount of colours I decided on keeping it as minimal as possible because it would look too complex and mashed together with the photographs.

If I were to create the book cover again I would create more roughs using the dimensions of the book with the digital approach and research further into cool stereotypes.