CDF Project 4 — Shape & Color
In this project, I applied my knowledge of typography, hierarchy, Gestalt principles, shape, and color to create a series of three book covers. As the project had loose requirements, I stretched my creativity and imagination and pushed my skill limits. Having little background in art, I challenged myself to do digital art. Below are my final book covers.
Part I: Brainstorming
All throughout middle school and the beginning of high school, I was a sucker for teenage realistic fiction romance novels. Right off the bat, I thought of my favorite childhood author, Sarah Dessen. Almost all of her novels take place on small beachside towns during the summer from the girl protagonist’s point of view. I knew I wanted to capture that setting as well as the different main motifs of each novel. Sarah Dessen also write some beautiful lines in the novel, and I thought a quote on the back of the book would be perfect. Looking at her current novel covers, there is an author description, small summary, and review on the back. The front has “#1 New York Times Bestselling Author” blurb that I thought I could include. Listed below are all my ideas and my initial thoughts of the image I wanted on the cover.
Author: Sarah Dessen
Theme: Teenage love, whimsicality, beach
Author Description (goes on back cover): Sarah Dessen is the New York Times best selling author of eleven novels, which have sold more than seven million copies and have received rave reviews as well as numerous awards. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband, Jay, and their daughter, Sasha Clementine.Visit her online at www.sarahdessen.com or at www.sarah-land.com.
Book 1
- Front: Dreamland, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
- Spine: Sarah Dessen, Dreamland
- Back: “Behind the camera, I was invisible. When I lifted it up to my eye it was like I crawled into the lens, losing myself there. and everything else fell away.”― Sarah Dessen, Dreamland
- Image: pier and person standing (both dark blue/black), sunset, reflection of sunset, pier, and person holding camera (red/pink/purple, blue)
Book 2
- Front: The Moon and More, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
- Spine: Sarah Dessen, The Moon and More
- Back: “The thing is, you can’t always have the best of everything. Because for a life to be real, you need it all: good and bad, beach and concrete, the familiar and the unknown, big talkers and small towns.” ― Sarah Dessen, The Moon and More
- Image: white stars in midnight blue sky, large yellowish moon in middle of front cover, reflecting in water, silhouette standing in water (blue, yellow)
Book 3
- Front: This Lullaby, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
- Spine: Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby
- Back: “This Lullaby is only a few words, a simple run of chords, quiet here in this spare room, but you can hear it, hear it, wherever you may go, even if I let you down, this lullaby plays on…” ― Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby
- Image: sunrise, girl silhouette sitting with earphones (orange, yellow)
Part II: Sketches
First Idea
After reviewing my brainstorming images, I chose This Lullaby as the first book as I wanted my overall continuation through the series to be a change over time. This Lullaby portrays a sunrise, Dreamland depicts a sunset, and The Moon and More illustrates nightfall. I really liked the idea of silhouettes to convey more of an abstraction of the main character as I want the readers to be able to envision their own image of how the main character looks. Across all three book covers, the silhouette faces the sun or moon so only the back is shown. All the front covers have either a sun or a moon with a reflection over the water. The author and title is on the bottom left to balance the girl on the right and moon/sun on top. I realized later that my last cover did not match the first two in terms of the position of the girl. I put both the quote and the author description on the back since the front cover is pretty full already, and I want my image to be the main focus. During my sketches, I thought I could make the background of the author description white as to not clash with the rest of my image and to make it readable. For the second book, the water line is a lot higher since I wanted to draw a pier which I thought would take up a lot of space since I imagined the girl would seemingly be far in the distance. Thus, I moved the quote from in the sky to in the water for the second book. All of the silhouettes’ actions reflect the quote on the back cover. For example, for Dreamland, the quote is:
“Behind the camera, I was invisible. When I lifted it up to my eye it was like I crawled into the lens, losing myself there. and everything else fell away.”
I thought of a girl holding a camera up while standing on the pier to take a picture of the sunset.
Elements of the time of day is portrayed in the sky, such as the clear sky during the day, the bird silhouettes at sunset, and the stars at nighttime. The main symbol of the quote or book is represented as an icon on the spine of the novel.
My initial instinct was to draw all of these images using colored pencil and then scan them since I was not sure how else I would create a serene, peaceful, yet romantic mood without more artistic background. However, later attempts at drawing on Illustrator give me a whole new platform and creative ability.
Second Idea
Continuing with the silhouette idea, I thought it may be interesting to make the “icon” from the first design the main image. I imagined the image to be black with a different background color for each book. For This Lullaby, I drew a part of a guitar and a part of a headphone set as my other vision for this idea. Figuring out where to put the title and author was tough. I did not want to ruin the main image by writing on it, but making the image smaller did not seem to work in my mind. Thus, I decided to write them around the curves of the guitar and headphones. I like how that looked, but one problem I thought of was that it may be hard to read. To go along with the more basic, flat image of the guitar, I placed the title really big on the spine and flipped the author’s name so the first and last name are stacked. Compared to the first spine design, this one gives me more of a cartoony and childish feeling, which matches the images. I sketched Dreamland and The Moon and More with similar thoughts in mind. I felt that the back cover text composition worked for the second design as well and stuck with that. Looking back, it works better for this composition than the first design. For The Moon and More, I struggled to think of what to do with the moon, because a silhouette of the moon is just a black circle, which will not mean much to the reader and look very plain. After searching online for some inspiration, I drew some leaves on the moon. Reflecting on this decision, I realize that it serves little purpose and adds little to no meaning.
Third idea
For my third idea, I wanted to bring more romantic elements into the cover while maintaining the symbols of each book. For This Lullaby, the squiggles of the earbuds lends itself nicely to cursive, which I tried incorporating as part of the wires. I thought it made the cover feel more whimsical and fun. Going along with the whimsicality, with the title Dreamland, I thought of being on cloud nine, so I drew a cloud silhouette. I furthermore continued with the cursive handwriting, adding peacefulness and romance elements into the cover. For The Moon and More, I thought about the meaning of the title and how the main character from the small town beach meets a city boy. Thus, I drew a city silhouette to capture that plot and motif. The spacing of “The Moon” and “and More” is intentionally above the image they represent. For these designs, it felt like the back was a little too bare, so I thought it would be cool to add a review in between the quote and author description, similar to the real book covers. In order to separate the chunks of text, I used a white rectangle to separate the quote from the review and thought I would make the review font size smaller than the quote as well. For Dreamland, I played around with the idea of hinting at the cover image on the back cover, so I made the rectangle text box into a cloud.
Part III: Digital Iterations
My first idea for my series was my first design, and even though I liked my other designs as well, I knew that I wanted to follow through with my initial inspiration. It embodies the serene, romantic mood and beach setting of the novels the best. Having learned an introduction to the Illustrator pen tool in class, I thought I would try creating my images digitally and see how that went.
These are my first iterations of This Lullaby. Before mid-crit, I was only able to finish one book as a lot of time was spent learning new tools in Illustrator such as the gradient, pen, and brush tools. With each element I put on, starting from the sky, and working my way down, I made a lot of changes to color and shape. As I wanted a soft, romantic feel, I used many curvy lines, seen in the waves washing onto the beach as well as the ripples in the ocean. In my first attempt, I imagined a sunrise to be the analogous colors of light pinkish red, orange, and yellow. I matched these warmer colors with a warmer shade of teal blue, and used a slightly darker value for the ripples. However, after playing around with the sunrise gradient, I realized that it could be construed as sunset as well. Furthermore, although I liked soft yellow color of the sun, it did not seem like it was glowing. Thus, I imagined the sunrise as more like daybreak, making the gradient go from sky blue to a muted yellow-orange. The white to yellow gradient of the sun definitely makes it seem more like it’s glowing, adding to the calm mood. The reflection of the sun in the water furthermore emphasizes the tranquility. To give dimension, I first drew darker orange strokes as the outside glow, then layered on top of that a lighter orange and a tint of pale yellow more near the middle. In order to tie the beach and water to the sky into one composition, I used very similar hues for the rest of the image as the sky. To give more depth to the image, I made the sand a slight gradient as well, transitioning the darker, sun-kissed sand touching the water to the dryer, lighter sand the girl is sitting on.
I played around with the curves of the waves a lot using the pen tool, purposely making it seem random, yet balanced with a big wave washing up in the back and a receding wave on the right. Furthermore, I did that so I could position the girl where there was more space between the sand and water, giving space and balance to the composition. The last thing I wanted was for my piece to seem crowded, since that would give the opposite feeling of relaxed and peaceful.
The last elements I needed to add was my text. Going through the different typefaces, I landed on Savoye LET Plain 1.0, a graceful, delicate, and flowing font, perfectly matching with my illustrations and the mood I am trying to create. In order to give hierarchy and greater readability, I chose Avenir for the author and “#1 New York Bestselling Author.” Avenir’s geometric-ness conveys simplicity, pairing nicely with the small-town beach setting. I placed the text in the lower left corner for balance reasons aforementioned. I furthermore did not want to take away from the details of the sky, sun and water. For the spine, I used the same fonts used on the cover, making the title bigger than the author since usually, when searching for a book in a series by the same author, the title is more important to see than the author. I added an icon, the same headphones the girl is wearing in the illustration, on the spine to add more elements of the cover to the spine. I struggled with the composition of text on the back cover, as I wanted to include the information but it seemed a bit cluttered and out of place, especially with the author description. This brought me to mid-crit time, where I got feedback and suggestions for my concerns.
Part IV: Mid-crit
The main questions I wanted to ask for mid-crit were whether there was continuity throughout the series with the images, how to improve the text composition on the back covers, the colors used so far and font, and the location of the title/author on the cover. I got the following main comments:
Suggestions:
- make use of shadows to better demonstrate time throughout the day
- omit the author description all together because it distracts from the vibe/image
- reflections on the water are streaky in comparison to rest of illustration
- black text is a bit harsh in contrast to soft colors
- don’t place water lines behind text
Parts liked:
- good continuation throughout the series from sunrise to sunset and the position of the sun/moon
- using the horizon to split up the text
- creating a relaxed, peaceful, soothing, simple feeling
- beach theme conveys teenage romance
- good placement of text on front cover
Part V: Final Iterations
Taking in the suggestions from my classmates and professor, I drew my other two books. I agreed that the author description on the back cover was made it seem crowded and out of place, especially with the openness of the ocean. Furthermore, it detracted from the details of the illustrations. For Dreamland, I drew the birds flying in different positions across the front and back covers to tie together the front and back covers more. It furthermore guides the reader’s eyes from the quote to the image and back to the quote to help them make a connection between the quote and the image. I drew the girl on the pier pretty small to depict that she is far away taking pictures of the sunset. With the ripples, I made sure to change the opacity as well as the hue in order to match the gradient. Initially, I was not sure what colors to make the sunset. I tried a red to orange-yellow gradient at first, but I did not get as much of a calming mood from it. My professor suggested that I just darken the value and hue of the sky from This Lullaby, which would demonstrate continuation throughout the day. Playing around with that idea, I created a dark purple to reddish pink gradient. I thought the dark purple would serve as a nice transition to the nighttime sky as well. To balance out the composition, I used a similar dark purple gradient for the water, making it lighter and more pink when it meets the horizon to add flow from the sky to the water. As I wanted the sun to stand out, but retain the darker, peaceful mood, I chose a deep red-orange gradient which glowed nicely within the surrounding magenta sky. For the reflection, because the sky reflects in the water as well, I used both orange and pink to mirror both the sun and sky and provide greater realistic details to the illustration. I thought white text contrasted nicely with the darker colors and silhouettes while not taking away from the relaxed mood.
For The Moon and More, I darkened the gradient yet again to a dark purple-blue, lightening the color as it got closer to the moon to emphasize the glow of the moon. I initially made the moon a solid light yellow color, however, it made the illustration seem flat. I really wanted the moon to glow, and after some searching, I found a feathering effect on Illustrator that worked perfectly with the background to make the moon seem like it’s illuminated. I drew white stars out of the triangles, making sure to put a gradient on each to make it fade out on the ends. It adds to the overall dreaminess of the setting. I made the reflection of the moon travel down the edge of the cover since I made the moon bigger. I also wanted the girl to be sitting on a boat in the midst of the reflection. I positioned the figure on the bottom right instead of the left like in my sketch in order to bring in greater continuation throughout the series with the location of the girl. For the title and author, I stuck with white text since it still contrasts nicely with the dark purple, balances the white stars, and is different enough from the yellow color of the moon. Decreasing the opacity of the reflection where the text overlapped helped a lot in making the text more clear to the reader. Finally, I made the text on the back the same color as the moon as to make it stand out from the white stars surrounding it. It furthermore ties the front and back covers into one illustration.
After finishing my two other covers, I asked for further feedback from my professor and got suggestions to place the stars and birds more carefully (especially around the spine), reconsider the alignment of text (quote and title/author) across covers, and to rethink the icons on the spines as they clash with the delicate style of my illustrations. Using this feedback and including more of the feedback from my classmates, I made further detailed changes and final touch-ups. Firstly, I thought removing the icon all together solved the problem of the clash in illustration styles and allowed the reader to focus on the complex image itself. I also aligned the quote, spine text, and title/author position on the cover to all be the same, to make it seem more like they are a part of the same series. I redid the placement of the birds and the stars and placed most of the bird/star instead of a little part of it on the spine so that the reader could tell what the image is just from the spine. I also made sure none of the water ripples, birds, or stars were behind text. To get rid of the streakiness of the reflection, I found a Gaussian blur tool that softened the lines. This definitely brought the whole romantic, tranquil feeling of the illustration together. Furthermore, I considered the suggestion to add shadows, and I agreed that that was a good idea since it would add more realism to the image and make the figure more integrated with the background and rest of the image. Thus, I added a shadow to the girl in the first and third book, conveying that with a lighter hue. I also thought the black text against the pale colors in This Lullaby was a bit too harsh, so I chose a purple color, making a greater connection between the first book and the other two books (as the other two books contain a lot of purple). The purple text melds the text with the soothing illustration and brings out the tenderness and picturesqueness. Lastly, I thought about how there is usually a part of the sand that is darker since it is underneath the water, so overlapped a bit of the sand and water, adding an additional degree of realism to the illustration.
Part VI: Final crit
During final crit, I loved seeing everyone’s book covers. It was amazing to see some people wielding their artistic abilities and others exploring their creativity. Overall, my book covers were really well received. Some comments included that the color choices are vibrant yet soothing and give flow to the series, the sun/moon and reflections serve as great transitions and looked really pretty, the typeface choices work well with the illustration style, and the gradient colors complement each other well. Some liked the girl silhouettes while others thought it could be more detailed and refined (someone suggested to even just make a gray to black gradient) to make it seem more lifelike.
Part VII: Reflection
Designing the book covers was a whole new experience for me, as I was able to create detailed digital art and learn many Illustrator tools for the first time. Throughout this process, I was able to work at the intersection between art and design, opening my eyes to the possibilities of varying size, scale, colors, and positioning. I never would have thought that I would be drawing again after two years of lessons in middle school, not to mention creating detailed digital drawings. This was definitely a challenging, fun, and rewarding experience.
