Monday, 20 February 2017

Design Practice - Studio Brief 1 - initial ideas

After analysing the existing book covers I began by creating 30 initial sketches of what my book cover designs would potentially look like. Taking most of the inspiration from the third analysed book cover, I began constructing different ways that the type and imagery could be layed out, on the front, back and spine of the covers.

Many of the first sketches show basic imagery that has been inspired by the ideas of the book and representations of the time period in which it was set. This includes the use of objects, such as the murder weapons involved in the case. By adding these the viewer can immediately determine that the book may be to do with crime. Another idea was to mimic the layout of a newspaper front cover. This was in relation to The New York Times, which printed the story at the time. 

Many of the adjectives that were associated with the book during the research stage are also reflected in some of these designs. For example, a cover that primarily focuses on the colour schemes and attention to type rather than imagery would represent the adjective mysterious. This way the audience are open to interpret the book cover for themselves and what mystery they can uncover through reading the non-fiction novel.

During this stage in the process, I decided that it would be appropriate to see what sizes are best for the typography. For example, after the research stage I found that the third book cover I had analysed was the most successful in terms of type as it structured the title in the centre, with the authors name above. After receiving advice from my peers, they also decided that this was the best cover of the three. 
However, one of the initial ideas was to create the cover in a style similar to a newspaper, meaning the type may not work to fit this structure. 

In terms of the typography itself, I decided to look into the fonts that were being used for newspaper articles and headlines. The New York Times in particular has used one font for many of their articles. This was Cheltenham, a font that I later decided to play around with during the development stages. Other fonts that were experimented with during the process include Bodoni 72 and Garamond, as they were both formal fonts to use for a book, which is based on serious themes. 


Although my intentions for the book cover were to create a more modernised version of In Cold Blood, I still decided that using traditional serif fonts would be most appropriate for the process. However during the final stages of the project some suggested that the experimentation of sans serif for the covers might have worked just as well.




As shown here, several variations of the book cover were designed using layouts including the rule of thirds, the Marber grid system and hierarchy grids, as learn during the course of the design principles module. This helped in the positioning of the text, as well as the images and spacing for the margins.

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