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The Brief
Choosing the book
Penguin give you three choices of books, Adult Fiction, Adult Non-Fiction and Children's Fiction.
I didn't know any of the books that had been given this year, so I went online to read blurbs and reviews of all three before I chose one, as you can only submit one design for one book. All three all had interesting aspects to them, but knowing myself as a designer I felt I would probably prefer to design for a children's book. So I decided to chose Carrie's War by Nina Bawden as my choice.
I didn't know any of the books that had been given this year, so I went online to read blurbs and reviews of all three before I chose one, as you can only submit one design for one book. All three all had interesting aspects to them, but knowing myself as a designer I felt I would probably prefer to design for a children's book. So I decided to chose Carrie's War by Nina Bawden as my choice.
Reading the book
The next step was to read the book so I understood the story and to inspire ideas for the cover design. I bought the book off amazon and as it was a children's book I was able to read it in a couple of days.
The next step was to read the book so I understood the story and to inspire ideas for the cover design. I bought the book off amazon and as it was a children's book I was able to read it in a couple of days.
The story was fairly simple, but I could understand to young children how it would be exciting and enjoyable.
Initial ideas
Soon after reading the book, I brainstormed ideas of parts of the book that stood out to me, such as the people, the events and the little details.
Quite a big part of the story and relevant to the suspense is to do with a skull, so this came into a lot of my initial ideas as it was the thing that stood out to me the most.
Soon after reading the book, I brainstormed ideas of parts of the book that stood out to me, such as the people, the events and the little details.
Quite a big part of the story and relevant to the suspense is to do with a skull, so this came into a lot of my initial ideas as it was the thing that stood out to me the most.
Thumbnails
I started making very rough thumbnails of some of the ideas I came up with from my brainstorm. To see if any of them further stood out or made it want to explore them further.
Starting designs
As it was a children's book and from researching Puffin Books, I know that illustrations are very much a big basis of whats used on their covers. So I decided to try and create an image of Carrie and Nick (her little brother).
Carrie and Nick had both been evacuated from London to a small town, during the Second World War.
(GASMASK)
I wanted to capture the feeling of the unknown that they were embarking upon, and that they were alone on this adventure.
I drew a couple of illustrations, in which I portraying both of them facing away, into the 'unknown' and with Nick looking up at Carrie to show that she was the parent now, she was looking after nick. It included the boxes that were given to evacuees. I then painted this in with water colour before scanning it in and placing it with the cover pdf.
The idea of using a skull within the design was still an idea so I then tried to incorporate a skull with the illustration.
Mixing the two worked a lot better when the illustration was a silhouette. I also tried adding creepy trees to the back cover as this was another element prominent in the story. I quite liked this idea but it definitely still needed work.
After taking a break from the designs, I went back to the illustration I had created, and added in suitcases. I also painted a burning house, (again relevant to the story line) and a willow tree, to test these in the designs.
Even though these were just rough tests, I still wasn't sure about the designs, I liked the illustration of Carrie and Nick, but wasn't happy with the house or the tree.
I then had the idea of a plane, this was relevant because it was war time and they were being evacuated due to air strikes.
So I made illustrations of a plane and exhaust smoke.
Again I placed these within the cover design.
I felt the illustration looked unfinished and slightly odd simply placed on the page, so I decided to outline it with a fine liner to see if that improved it.
I thought it looked a lot better. I also thought using a paper plane instead of an actual plane might also be nice touch, as it was relevant to the idea that this was a children's book, and about children's adventures, but also with the significance of the war and aeroplanes.
This was my favourite design so far.
I came back to the design after having a couple of days from designing it, and although it had definitely made progress, it still wasn't done. I felt that it was unfinished and the back wasn't very effective.
So I then played around with the design, I added a paper plane to the front with the children, and then made another aeroplane illustration for the back to go with the paper plane, to maybe further highlight the significance of war.
Looking over it I felt the background colour needed to be a more pastel cream, and that the illustration of the children needed to be darker as it had lost some of its colour being scanned it.
I also wasn't sure about the back with both the paper plane and the aeroplane so changed this to just an aeroplane and played around with the placement.
This was the final layout I came to. Again this was definitely the best so far.
I printed this out to see how it would look as a book cover.
I took a break from the design again, one night I suddenly had a new idea for a cover design.
The idea was to make the children illustration into a silhouette, and create trees boardering them in the shape of a skull. I thought this could potentially make a more striking and intriguing cover.
I took the illustration and made it into a silhouette and then placed the shape of the skull around it. With the title and author inside.
I also tried making it more detailed but again realised that this wasn't the look I wanted.
So then I simply just filled the branches in black, like the silhouette.
This was much more what I was aiming to create.
I scanned it in and placed it on the cover design. I was pleased with this.
I also played around with colour and placement of text.
I tried a very pastel light blue, and thought this looked really nice against the black and much more interesting than just white.
I then needed to think about the design for the back. I made a boarder for the text in a similar way to the front. Then scanned this in and placed it in the design, however it was very thick, much thicker than the front so it didn't look right and also seemed like a bit of a boring idea.
I then copied the children silhouette, made it small like an icon, and thought I could maybe to this. I added the branches like the front. But the first time I did, the branches were too thick. So I redid it making the branches thinner.
Placed on the back, it still didn't look completely right.
I looked back on just the icon over the writing and really like the simplicity of it. So I just added that, and felt that worked a whole lot better and fit well.
I made two final designs one with the title and author inside the skull and one with it outside.
I left the designs up on my way for a couple of days printed them out and kept looking over them to try and make a final decision.
In the end I decided to make the skull a little bigger and so that the text inside could be a bit bigger and clearer.
I had to export the the design into a pdf format one of just the front cover and one of the full cover.
I uploaded my design to the submissions website and sent it off.
Evaluation_
Illustration, especially illustration for literature is becoming a very strong interest of mine, and thus this brief was very enjoyable for me. Although it isn't a huge project, I did spend a reasonable amount of time on it and I definitely feel like it developed a lot throughout the process. And I felt this development led me to a strong final piece. I was happy with my final outcome.
