Project 4
In this project we are going to design book covers for three books that belonged to the same series.
My Choice of Books:
Gone with the Rainy Season/The Stories of the Sahara/ Never-flower in Never-dream
Brief Background Introduction:
All this three books are written by Sanmao(Echo Chan) who was a famous Taiwanese writer and translator. I chose these books because I started reading Echo’s books since I was13 years old and I still enjoy reading it now. Originally born in Chongqing, China, Echo moved to Madrid at her 20s and it is where she met her husband Jose. Then since it was always Echo’s dream to live in Sahara, they moved to Sahara and started a life there. After Jose drowned while diving, she returned to Taiwan. Her life was an adventure and Echo recorded her stories in her book in the most simple but intriguing way. Gone with Rainy Seasons is a book that collected the stories she wrote at her early twenties. The Stories of the Sahara records her life with Jose in Sahara which was her happiest time. Never-flower in Never-dream was written after she lost Jose.
Information to include in book covers:
Gone with the Rainy Season:
Front: Gone with the Rainy Season/Echo Chan/Publisher
Spine: Gone with the Rainy Season/Echo Chan
Back: a brief introduction to the book and some people’s comments.
Quote: 当天风和日丽，满街红男绿女，三毛身怀巨款，更是神采飞扬
The Stories of the Sahara:
Front: The Stories of the Sahara/Echo Chan/Publisher
Spine: The Stories of the Sahara/Echo Chan
Back: a brief introduction to the book and some people’s comments
Quote: 每想你一次，天上飘落一粒沙，从此形成了撒哈拉
Never-flower in Never-dream:
Front: Never-flower in Never-dream/Echo Chan/Publisher
Spine: Never-flower in Never-dream/Echo Chan
Back: a brief introduction to the book and some people’s comments
Quote: 寂寞如影，寂寞如随，旧欢如梦，不必化解，已成共生
Since these three books included stories about different period of Echo’s life I decided to use items or scenes that showed up in the stories to fill the front cover. The main idea is to create a crowded and complex front cover with items that hint the stories and then wipe part of them and write the book name in the white space.
Draft:
Gone with the Rainy Season:
The first book included stories written when Echo was at her 20s. It tells stories about skipping school and spent a whole day reading books in a beautiful graveyard, about her fighting with her mother about what kind of shoes she can wear and about her secrete crush on her drawing teacher. The vibe of this book is sentimental and youthful so I decided to set the main color to be light green. I want to create a garden full of different kinds of flowers and plants, from peony to cactus. The garden that includes totally different plants have different living environment may looks strange and unpredictable but so does the heart of a teenager girl. Also I want to use those various kinds of flowers to represent the delightful things in her life and the many possibilities for her future.
Above are some details of the flowers.
Then I wiped part of the garden to create an outstanding white stripe where I am going to write the book name and the author name. I choose to do that because with such a complex background if I simply put the book name with the background, even using bold font type it can be hard to read. Therefore I decided to wipe out part of the background, by doing these I can make sure that readers can appreciate the colorful background while reading the book name with no difficulty. I also decided to handwrite the names to match with the sketch background.
The Stories of the Sahara:
The second book was written during the years Echo lived in the Sahara desert with her husband Jose. She has always had a strange nostalgia feeling for Sahara and she decided to moved there. Knowing her decision, Jose moved to Sahara first and found a job here. They then got married, built there own house and enjoyed their adventure marriage. I used pink as the dominate color to represent their romantic marriage. For the items I included in the front page I included their marriage certification, the camel skull which was the engagement gift from Jose and the luxurious building of the national hotel which was a place they would go for dinner and escape the desert for a moment.
I also wiped a part of the background of and wrote the book name which is consistently with the first book.
Never-flower in Never-dream:
The last book was written after Jose dead in an accident. He was a diver which is a dangerous occupation and one day he went out and never came back. After Jose passed away, Echo spent most of the time reminiscence and after visited all the placed they went before she went back to her home in Taipei. After a few years, she committed suicide and by that time she was only 47 years old. The third book is a sad ending for her life so I used the color blue. Trying to convey the idea that life is like a dream, I put irrelevant items together. I also changed the background of the book name from white to dark blue to make it more different from the white background of the cover.
Final Version:
After the interim critic I noticed that the book name and the author name are not big enough, so in order to make then more outstanding I changed the position of the white bar. Instead of just wiped out a small part of the background I decided to following the rule of third and place a vertical white bar at the 1/3 position of the cover. I also changed the font when writing the names. Moreover I added a background color to make the white bar even more distinguishable from the background.
I also changed the color scheme for the second book. The pink and green color scheme is a little too colorful and can be distracting given the already complex outlines. Therefore I chose to use violet which both represent their romantic marriage and the mysterious desert under the moon light. I adjusted the color balance to blend a sense of yellow with the purple as well to covey the sense of tranquility.
I changed the most for the third cover. Instead of trying to convey the idea of dream by putting random items together I decided to bring the feeling by using the color scheme of blue and grey. I included the house Echo used to live in when she was a little girl, the apartment she and Jose met in Spain, as well as the church where they got married, to convey the move on of time. I also put the back view of a woman at the center who is holding gesture of waiting.I colored the flower on the left bottom with royal blue which has much higher saturation than the background to make it stands out. The contrast between the flower and the background brings a feeling of surreal and dream.
Below are some details for the third book cover.
Since the front covers are colorful and full of details I chose minimalistic design for book spine and back covers. Each spine and back cover will have the consistent color with the front page. I select my favourite sentence from the book and put it on the back cover as a quote. Below are my final version of the whole design for the book cover.
Below are pictures of the when I printed out those covers and actually put them on book.
