Book Cover Design Challenge
About
In episode 8 of the Young Guns 2, Chris issues a book cover design assignment for them to tackle to help them develop their design portfolio. Our Design Team played along and above you can see my outputs.
Here are the parameters
Take 3 classic fiction books
Redesign covers
Cohesive set (theme, color, style, etc…)
Maximum 4 colors
Judging criteria
Concept (surprise) A-ha moment
Convey the main theme
Shelf presence (draw the viewer in)
Cohesiveness
The backstory about my design concept
Since the moment Radovan (my boss) presented this design challenge to our Design Team, I've been thinking about it... I've made a selection of books I know I've read or seen filmed. I then re-watched those films to refresh my memory on the plots.
My next step was to do some research on book covers in general and the books I chose specifically. I discovered literary infographics where all of the world-famous books are described in detail. This is fantastic for students, and I wish it had existed when I was in school. I came across a lot of really great designs and approaches, which made me wonder if I could come up with something new and better.
Then I started sketching in black and white, as I was instructed in the UX course on website wireframes... in order to avoid being influenced by colors (which create emotions and can be misleading at this stage).
I experimented with various ways to connect the stories, what they've got in common. If there are any major themes in the story, such as a split personality or the loss of one's home, female or male characters… and so on…
And this is my final selection and designs:
The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy
1984 (nineteen eighty-four)
Fight Club
I started with the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... From the beginning, I experimented with the silhouette idea, trying to involve the thumb, galaxy, whale... There are plenty of fantastic book covers out there for this title. Because of the color limitations of this assignment, it was much easier to just go with the simplest idea it came to my mind.
For the fight club book cover, I was struggling with the split personality, as well as the main character's insomnia and his changing day/night duality... Then I hit the outline instead of the fill of the silhouette by accident, and tadaaa, I got it. The two signs above the head are simply the anger symbol known from comics… The skyscrapers in the background are just the ones that will explode thanks to the terrorist group that formed in the underground fight clubs.
Nineteen eighty-four is the last... There are also a lot of awesome book covers for this book, and I was really worried about what I'd come up with... Everyone is just playing with the eye and the dark theme. I started playing with the silhouette, which is the main connecting element of all of my book covers and then I saw my eureka – Big brother shadow – simple, minimal, obvious. I love it.
My final thoughts
This challenge is enlightening, especially because of the limitations. You just can't go too crazy with your design. Less is more!