Visual Skills: Book Cover Development

 

Reflection:

• Thumbnail sketches have been pivotal in my previous briefs so I wanted to experiment with them

again for my book cover in order to generate some initial ideas.

• This enabled me to concentrate on composition, basic shapes / forms and iteration of motifs and symbols.

• I used pencil, fine liner and a bold brush pen to play with and translate different concepts.

• The use of simple symbols such as a cabinet of drawer simply communicates what the book is about.

Notable Illustrators:

• Bill Bragg is an illustrator who has worked a lot with the Folio Society creating simple book covers that pack a big punch. His use of a limited colour palette, basic shape and form and negative space is something I really want to take into consideration when creating my roughs and final book cover. The Metamorphosis cover, especially, is my favourite from his works as the silhouette against a patterned vintage background juxtaposes the creepy and the beautiful. The red and black work really well together and is a colour scheme I am contemplating using.

• Ronald Cala is a graphic designer and illustrator who layers negative and positive imagery together to create multiple meanings that require closer inspection and second viewings. As with Bill Bragg, he uses a very limited palette partnered with simplistic forms and motifs. These are exceptionally clever pictures that I hope to be able to draw inspiration from in my developmental work.

• Louise Lockhart visited my peers and I recently to discuss her practice of making pictures (a more detailed blog post can be found on my Personal & Professional Practice blog). I really admire her drive and dedication to trying out new ways and processes of creating illustrations and find her combination of simplistic shapes, forms, colours, compositions and techniques very inspiring. I would like to implement her craftsmanship into my final cook cover - using an amalgamation of paper cut, scanned textures for added visual interest, digital manipulation (Photoshop) and the negative space concepts of Bill Bragg and Ronald Cala.

Next steps:

• I now need to select 5 ideas from these thumbnails to use as a basis for my roughs. Which thumbnails worked best and why? 

• I need to consider colour palette. What colours evoke the feeling of magic and wonderment? Red, purple, blue? As evidenced in previous briefs, a limited colour scheme is much more powerful and effective. I would like to use no more than 3 colours.

• Lettering needs to be taken in consideration. Hand lettering? Fonts found online? A combination of both?

• Which processes should I consider? I used an entirely analogue approach for my typology poster and an entirely digital process for my editorial illustrations. Should I apply both, taking forward the best elements of each?