CDF Project 4
Print/Illustration
2016
Individual Project
About the Project
For Project 4 in Communication Design Fundamentals F’16, students designed book covers for a collection of three books (of the relatively same size). The covers must use a color palette of 3–4 colors and should explore how to communicate the messages and themes of the books using form and color.
Project Process
The books I chose to design book covers for are all classic epic novels: The Odyssey, Inferno, and Paradise Lost.
The Odyssey by Homer
Relevant Information:
Title: The Odyssey
Author: Homer
Dimensions: 8 in x 5.25 in x 1.75 in
Inferno by Dante
Relevant Information:
Title: Inferno
Author: Dante Alighieri
Dimensions: 8 in x 5.25 in x 1.5 in
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Relevant Information:
Title: Paradise Lost
Author: John Milton
Dimensions: 8 in x 5.25 in x 1.5 in
Some Initial Sketches:
My initial design sketches all played with the idea of using the primary colors as the three main colors for the book covers. This is a facet of the sketches I want to keep as not only do each of the primary colors reflect an aspect of the book (Odyssey — waves and a sea journey, Paradise Lost — tree of knowledge, Inferno — fiery hell) but also show that the texts are very “elemental” as they are classic novels.
However, I realized I had made my sketches a little too literal, and when I started iterating on the computer, I moved away from having any actual drawings and kept the book covers very abstract. The design intent behind the book covers was to create pieces that would reinvent these quite old pieces of literature in a way that makes them less intimidating and a little bit more modern, as these texts are still applicable (and good) for the modern day.
I initially kept the first iteration of The Odyssey’s book cover very simple and focused keeping a more modern font for the title text, as well as generally evoking the sea with the two colors of blue. However, the book cover seemed overly empty, so I completed the first full collection iteration by using more rectangles on the front cover to provide a little bit more form to the covers. For the Odyssey, I used the rectangles to represent waves; for Inferno, a fiery descent; for Paradise Lost, the tree of knowledge.
The feedback from this first complete iteration was that the typeface used was interesting, some placement changing was necessary for the placement of the text on the spine, but the concept itself was a little too literal.
In order to switch up the concept a bit, I made a much more abstract version of the book covers using the same typeface — instead using a blurry line to illustrate the descent into hell (Inferno), a journey (The Odyssey), and a snake (Paradise Lost) (as shown below).
However, I think the execution did not really match the design concept, and this step seemed to move away from the idea that there should be no real illustration per say on the covers.
I then reverted back to a similar idea in the first complete iteration of the collection, except this time using even boxes. I first prototyped the concept just with Inferno (shown below).
This concept seemed to work a bit better, sticking with the more modern aspect of the book while still providing some visual information. In this case, Inferno’s cover showed the illustration of fire while still showing a “descent into hell” with the spacing beneath the “o”. I then completed this iteration for the design, increasing the box size a bit to better match the typeface lettering size. For the Odyssey cover, I tried making the text of the “The Odyssey” to look like a boat and the blue square slightly resembling a square. For Paradise Lost, I used the text to resemble the top of a tree, growing from the original green squares.
The next few iterations then involved playing with color palettes and shades/tints in order to get a set of colors that contrast well with each other and black, which finally led to the final set of books (shown below).
