Project 4 : Form & Color
Introduction: In this project, we designed book covers for a series. I chose to do The Lord of the Rings trilogy, not only because it is one of my favorite epic, but also because its encouraging and inspiring theme I would really want to design for. Additionally, the strong connection across the three books also made my design process more integrated and united by exploring the common and distinct elements among the trilogy.
Getting Started: The first I did was searching different kinds of book cover designs for The Lord of the Rings by different people, including J.R.R. Tolkien himself. These are some of the websites I have checked:
The necessary information I want to put on my front cover includes The Lord of the Rings itself, the series name and the author name. For the back cover I would put a short summary of each book on the center. The rest elements, which are also the most important thing, are about how I am going to illustrate the theme of the trilogy by hierarchy, color, typography and graphic shapes.
Also, my book cover would have width 14.3cm, height 21.7cm and spine 3.5cm.
Sketching: The first few sketches I worked on were inspired from some traditional book cover design for The Lord of the Rings. I chose to position all the text in the center to create a traditional and classic sense of the book. Sketch 1, 2, and 3 below are my first few sketches. In sketch 1, I used a circle shape as a symbol of “ring”, and inside of the ring, there is a view of landscape in Shire, the Hobbits’ home, with trees, roads and small houses. In sketch 2, with the same symbol of the “ring”, I drew two towers representing alliances of Orthanc and Minas Morgul by Tolkien’s interpretation. In sketch 3, the “ring” contains a sword of Aragon the King as well as the eye of Sauron, indicating a final war between the justice and the evilness.
Of course, my exploration for inspiration did not end there. The rest of my sketches were focused on several important elements in The Lord of the Rings, such as the ring, Sauron’s eye, the journey of the fellowship. Although for sketching it is hard for me to demonstrate the best typography that fitted with the graph, I tried to illustrate how I would want to position the text in order to achieve some effects. For example, I intended to put the “ord” lower than the “L” to highlight the “LORD” in the title. And they were put above other texts on the previous sketches for the similar purpose. These were demonstrated from sketch 4 to 8.
However, by talking with my instructor Saumya about my first few sketches, I found that almost all of my designs were too literal to rely on the power of color and typefaces. Some of the theme could be well demonstrated with simple shapes and colors. Therefore, I was inspired to show a specific theme of each book using only simple shapes and color to achieve an abstract effect. Sketch 9 shows some of my redesigned versions.
The top of my sketch 9 shows the first version of my redesigned cover. For The Fellowship of the Ring, “Fellowship” is the word of theme. Using nine ellipses with different height, I managed to show different people like the Hobbits and Gandolf the Grey in the whole fellowship group. For The Two Towers, “Conflict” is the word of theme. I kept the two towers and get rid of the big circle surrounding them for a cleaner and simpler design. The only two elements in the center can actually make a big contrast with black and white color in order to show a heated war. For The Return of the King, “Success” is the theme. At the same time I wanted to keep the meaning of the “King” so that is why I chose the sword symbol. My first digital iterations were based on the three sketches.
Digital Iterations: In Iteration 1, I like the ring and “The Lord of the Rings” in bright yellow in the top right corner to show consistency between the three books. However, through the precious feedback I received from my instructor and classmates, I found that the shapes for volume 2 and 3 were not as abstract as the first one, which consisted of only simple ellipses. In contrast, the eye, the sword and the towers are still a bit “literal”. Another big problem is the background color. It was hard to identify some of the shapes, especially the black tower, in such a dark grey background. Although the printer produced a different kind of color I was meant to put on, it made me realize the importance of doing test printing for later iterations. Color matters a lot in the whole visual experience.
Then, my task was about how to effectively communicate the theme using even simpler shapes and colors that fit better. Though dark colors do reflect the general theme of the three series, I decided to pick up three different colors to show the distinctiveness and try using typefaces to build the consistency. For “The Fellowship of the Rings”, I was recommended to use just circles to show the theme of fellowship and put more diversity on their sizes. That turned out to be a great idea for abstract design. I chose green to be the theme color since in Tolkien’s book the fellowship started their journey from woods of elves. Additionally, I want to put the yellow symbol on the back, which means “one” in Quenya that Tolkien created as an elvish language for The Lord of The Rings, in order to demonstrate more unique elements from the book. Certainly, there are “two” and “three” on the back cover of the second and the third volume too. That is also one my ways to build more connections. Iteration 2.1 shows the book cover for volume 1.
For “The Two Towers”, I picked up triangles to replace the towers since triangles are the very geometric to show conflict with the angles. And I positioned the two groups of triangles facing each other to illustrate a heating war between the two sides. The black and white color also make a difference in the conflicting effect. Iteration 2.2 shows the book cover for the volume 2.
For “The Return of the King”, I chose blue as the theme color since it can show a sense of bravery and victory. Square is the main shape here. After thinking quite a while about the shape combination, I finally illustrated the “King” by positioning the biggest and darkest square on the top of all other squares. However, as you may notice here, it was a little deviated from my original theme “success”. And I was not very satisfied with what I have done either in terms of the square combinations.
It is true that I have made a lot of progress since my last digital iteration. However, I need to solve some problems. For example, the typeface of the book name. The typeface I was using would be too playful and childish to represent the deep theme of “The Lord of the Rings”. The reason I adapted that cute typeface was just to add some fun to the plain cover. But there are so many ways to make the book cover not boring by adjusting the font size, leading and different character forms! A good design does not mean complication and sometimes the cleaner and clearer, the better. Another big problem is my design with the squares as it is not very effective in representing the theme of striving for success. That led to my next digital iterations.
This iteration not only connects the circles through an invisible line, but also integrates the whole cover with different levels of green. All the things on the book cover are in green, and even the white texts have some opacity over the green. Besides, under the guidance of my instructor, I reduced the number of typefaces to be only one, which is Garamond. Garamond is a classic typeface that can fit really well with the theme in The Lord of the Rings, so that is why I chose it. Another subtle change is that I made “The Fellowship of the Ring” text, which is in white at the lower right corner, to be horizontal instead of being vertical for the consistence of the whole cover. To make the fonts more interesting, I learnt to change the font size alternatively which also makes a difference in emphasizing the “LORD” and the “RINGS” in the title.
This iteration is for “The Two Towers”. The theme color here is brown. And I made my graphic design kind of be the background on the cover without messing up with the book title. Except for the color and graphics, the rest of it is kept consistent with the first volume.
This iteration is for “The Return of the King”. It took me a long time trying to find an appropriate blue for the theme of bravery without being too dark to hide the book title. Also, I changed my graphic. Demonstrating “striving for success”, the dark blue square on the top as well as the stairs indicate that the effort of overcoming difficulties is worth achieving a great success. And that is exactly what I want to show on the book cover of “The Return of the King”.
Conclusion: The last three iterations above are the final versions of my book covers. I want to thank my instructor especially for letting me think outside of the box and keep explore new designs. Also, the class critics made me learn many good thoughts in design from my peers which helped me a lot during the final iteration. This project makes me obtain the ability in creating connection and consistence by combining color and typefaces organically. And it also gives me the chance to have great fun in reading one of my favorite books with the covers I designed!
