Project 4 — Designing Trilogy Book Covers

CDF Fall 2018

Introduction

For this project, I decided to choose the three books: Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Wizard of Oz. Although these three books aren’t actually part of one series, they all capture wonder and adventure of children, which is what I aim to emphasize.

Cover Contents

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — author: Lewis Carroll
Peter Pan — author: J.M. Barrie
The Wizard of Oz — author: Frank L. Baum

Final Design

Project Process

Initial Sketches

sketches

I started out the sketching process by playing around with different concepts of Peter Pan. At first, I just thought about the grid spaces and how to summarize it the best within the space while making it aesthetic. However as I mentioned before, because the main theme that I picked out from the three of the books was wonder and adventure, I decided that I wanted the covers to best encapsulate that. To me, wonder is a childhood dream and also something that gives me hope to live by when I think of it. Adventure is how I wish my life could be like, but is also something that requires courage. Thinking of these components, I knew that I wanted a “dreamy” front cover for wonder and inspirational quotes from the book that encourages people to be adventurous on the back. After drawing everything out, I liked the concept of the night sky with the moon the best, so I decided to take that concept to the digital iteration.

Digital Iterations

First iteration

With the “dreamy” theme in mind, I decided to go with a concept of a bedtime story. Because all three books are classic children’s books, I wanted to make the covers seem like something that children would want to go to and pick out to read before they go to bed. The waxing moon was to emphasize that the overall cover was a depiction of the sky, and also to show that it is part of a trilogy. The white box in the middle was to clearly distinguish the title from the rest of the background and make it look clean. On the back, I added constellations of Aries for Peter Pan and Gemini for Wizard of Oz, as both of the constellations have meanings behind it which shows courage from a mythological character. Little icons were added both on the spine and in the front to capture the important moments of the book that exemplified adventure — Peter Pan and the children flying to Neverland, and the hat of the witch from Wizard of Oz when Dorothy learns that she had the power to go home all along.

Interim Critique

For the interim crit, I took the first digital iteration to present. I had 3 main questions to ask:

1. Do the covers overall seem “dreamy”?
2. Does the white box in the center detract from the overall mood?
3. Do the constellations/stars on the back of the book messy or adequate?

I got a lot of different opinions regarding these three questions. The feedback that stood out the most were:

• “I don’t get the purpose of the white box — it seems to be counterintuitive of the dreamy vibe you’re trying to set”
• “Having two big white elements in the front seems like a bit too much to take in”
• “With the big, clean white box to detach the title from the rest of the cover, I feel like you could do much more with the background”

The rest of the comments were that they liked the glowing effect on the moon and the stars and that they really contributed to the wondrous mood. However, I gave my design another thought and came to a conclusion that indeed, the purpose of the white title box was to make it stand out from the other elements of the cover, but I also wanted to keep the sky just as the sky without too much detail. That’s why moving forward, I decided to get rid of the white box and bring the stars to the front to illuminate the sky with radiance.

Final Iteration

The waxing moon was a pivotal element in my design that really connected the three books together so I decided to emphasize by placing it on the top right corner. This way, even though the size is smaller (compared to the previous iteration), it is still conspicuous and has a huge presence in the cover. I also decided to change the hue of “Wizard of Oz” to match the hue of “Peter Pan” more and added the wand to balance out the hat. This final iteration captures both the wonders of the night sky with glowing of moon and stars against the saturated background color and the adventurous aspects of the story through the respective icons of each book.

Final Product

What I learned

Through this project, I learned to be more proficient with Illustrator and overall how to think about modifying the hue, saturation, and value of color to make them fit the concept of my design. I also learned to conceptualize different words into physical designs and it was fun to see the finished product. Moreover, I was very impressed with the variety of designs that my peers came up with and realized that there are different ways of making something seem like it is part of a series without making it obvious.