Very much a work in progress, I’ve been having a bit of fun with The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde thinking about the mirror (a major symbol in the novel) and the layers that conceal and reveal what was always in fact there:
The Book Cover Club
One of the projects I’ve been enjoying working on lately is this cover for ‘On The Road’. I wanted to stay away from the computer for this one and after a bit of research (Pinterest ‘On The Road’ board) I realised I didn’t want to include any literal or obvious references to a road or a car and decided to focus on the idea of the journey instead. I imagine the perfect road trip can only possibly start by dropping pins on an old map and tracing the route with bright red thread so I did exactly that with type:
Final design mock-up with the ‘O’ subtly referencing a wheel and the second ‘O’ and ‘D’ road painted lines:
Another month, another book for The Book Cover Club.
We chose The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald and I will admit it’s been quite the challenge.
The story is so rich with symbols and double entendres that I felt I had to incorporate them in the design. I looked at Man Ray’s many surrealist experiments with photography from around the same time Fitzgerald was writing the novel and played around with my design for a couple of weeks, adding layers as I went along.
This is my first effort:
I was happy with it but at that point I was too obsessed with the book to let go. I wanted to try another approach with the all-seeing eye using Fitzgerald’s style and the over use of subordinating and complex sentences in his writing applied to the visuals. Not sure I’m making much sense here but I wanted all the elements to relate to each other combining and elongating the composition in the way words would in a long sentence.
Way out of my comfort zone but I really enjoyed working on this!
☞ Read MoreTalking about books one day (this is something we do a lot of ha) we were saying how interesting and exciting Book Clubs are so we decided to start our own. With a twist. Being book designers, each month we would pick up a book to read, discuss and design the cover of!.
And so the Book Cover Club was born. The first book we picked is Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and the challenge was to avoid featuring the cockroach in any way, shape or form.
Every book cover is a visual analysis of the narrative, an invitation to read but should never reveal too much. I read The Metamorphosis as a metaphor and for me the room and the door were only a prison in his mind. I tried to recreate this idea in my design and used bold type and a shade of red (carmine) that is extracted from a type of cockroach and widely used as a dye for fabrics, cosmetics and as a natural food colouring. Ideally ‘The Metamorphosis’ would be red metallic foil.
Have you read the book? Do you like my cover?
☞ Read More