Shape & Color
Project 4
Research
Before I even picked my book or series I knew I wanted to try my hand at creating something flat and minimalistic. I wanted to recreate something as if it were made for a smartphone app. I thought it’d be interesting to take an older book or series and give it new life. I didn’t want to create a traditional book cover, but perhaps an icon or wallpaper for a smartphone that could be used as the book cover.
I drew a lot of my initial inspiration from the mobile game Monument Valley. It’s simple geometry was really influencing to me because it showed how much you could create with just a basic cube as your building block. The style feels very modern and yet simple. Recreating a series with this theme could potentially make it feel like the series was recreated for a digital issue of the books.
Monument Valley:
I also really liked modern flat and minimalistic styles many apps and websites use. If I couldn’t spin the isometric theme in a compelling way I’d be able to fall back on a more simple design style.
Flat/Minimal:
Series and Theme
Picking a book series or theme was really challenging for me since I knew I wanted to create something in this modern lens. I tried to think of a series that had three defining different areas or icons that I could recreate in this minimalistic way. Take something old and identifiable and give it new life in the form of a phone app.
Thinking about childhood books, I was in love with the Percy Jackson and Harry Potter series, but those books had more than three and didn’t have simple defining features that I could recreate. Percy Jackson was traveling the world and Harry Potter’s magical buildings and locations far too complex for my Illustrator Knowledge.
I started to think about movies and TV shows instead. I stumbled upon Avatar the Last Airbender, one of my favorite childhood shows of all time. It had 3 seasons each focusing on a different element. Each season was labeled as a Book covering each of the elements the avatar was mastering. The idea of making three books focusing on different elements, but still be a part of the same theme, was really interesting. The series would be Book 1: Water, Book 2: Earth, and Book 3: Fire, with air being an element that I could interweave between all of the books. Each element also had a defining kingdom and color scheme that I could try to portray to make the cover of each book.
Book Contents
Series: Avatar the Last Airbender
Authors: Michale Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko
Book Titles: Book 1: Water, Book 2: Earth, Book 3: Fire
Official Font: Herculanum
Sketching Concepts
Initially I was just playing with basic shapes and the elemental symbols to get a feel for what I could accomplish. I knew my basic color scheme so I decided to incorporate color where I could. I looked for iconic buildings and landscapes from each of the regions to see if I could recreate that isometrically for each of the covers. While the building forms were interesting, nothing fit my ideal theme as well as I thought. However, I continued to keep experimenting with isometric concepts in my last few design sketches.
I thought I could make interesting cubes that portrayed each of the elements. Each individual cube could be like an app icon for each of season. While I liked how my sketches turned out, I couldn’t quite translate them into illustrator the way I wanted to. I didn’t know enough about color and shading to pull off the level of detail I wanted.
First Digital Concepts/Iterations
My first few iterations focused on toying with basic isometric concepts. The 3 books followed three elements: water, earth, and fire. So I wanted to mess around with different compositions using basic isometric forms with the book cover’s respective color. I liked the minimalistic and app-like feel the cubes had. But I was worried if I’d be able to make something more meaningful than just the basic cubes in illustrator. I tried recreating my sketches with the cube of water, earth, and candle (to represent fire). However, I wasn’t happy with the results.
Second Digital Concepts/Iterations
I decided to pivot from my initial isometric designs and started to pursue vector art to create flat and clean objects. I drew inspiration from the different types of “bending” or martial art styles each element had.
I was happy with how my vector traces turned out as I thought the silhouettes really captured each nation’s style and personality. I really liked how each martial arts style was so unique in the show, so I really tried my best to find forms and poses that best separated the three elements. The use of the element’s colors would also help with the differentiation for people who didn’t know the series.
Third Digital Concepts/Iterations
I felt this poses alone didn’t look right on the front cover. It didn’t really go with my minimalist theme as the poses were too dynamic. I really liked the flat style so I figured I could place them on the back with some text. For the front, I chose to recreate some of the main characters from each book with the same flat and minimalist style. Each character would be from the respective element the book was about. I also changed the background from the soft scroll-like cream to muted pastels of each element. Using stronger values for blue, green, and red was too overwhelming. Muting the colors to form a water pastel-type color really felt like it belonged in an app, which was my overall goal.
For the spine, I recreated the symbols for each element and put the title of the season with the official font of the series. I left the title and authors out on the front page because I wasn’t sure which hierarchy I should pursue because I didn’t want the information to take too much away from the icons.
Interim Critique
After the interim critique, I had a lot of good feedback about how I should change my book covers. First, I chose to place the series title and authors underneath the icon figures while center aligning them. I’d be sure to change the font size and space to easily show the structure and hierarchy of the text. Secondly, while people seemed to enjoy the figures on the back, they also pointed out that they didn’t exactly match the art style that the front figures had. While I really liked the poses on the back, I thought it best to replace them with something that better fit the theme and style.
Fourth Digital Concepts/Iterations
After going over my feedback, a lot of people recommended making changes to the back cover. The poses were interesting, but the art style didn’t seem to match the front covers in the way I hoped it would. I started to recreate each element’s symbol in illustrator while changing the color scheme to match my muted color palette. I also experimented with the new symbols and the old poses because the contrast seemed interesting and to be honest I was quite attached to the poses.
In the end, these iterations felt like I was forcing the poses on them too much. Even though I really wanted the martial arts poses to work, it just wasn’t meshing correctly. However, I did really like the larger muted element symbols that I created. These items weren’t dynamic and fit the overall theme much better.
Final Book Covers
