Project Four: Shape & Color
Series Book Jackets
Digital Illustration and Print
November, 2016
Overview:
Students were assigned to design book covers for a series of three related books. The series could be an existing trilogy, three related books, or three books by the same author. Since the assignment revolved around the idea of a series, the three illustrations were to be similar, and visually convey their belonging to the series. This was to be accomplished through the use of similar elements, themes, or colors to form a strong connection between the three pieces. Students were asked to limit their use of color and typefaces across the three works. Typography, drawings, shapes, and colors were to be used to convey emotion or meaning.
Process:
Brainstorming:
The process began with brainstorming and sketching. Brainstorming was done as very rough pen / pencil sketches to get an idea of what patterns, shapes, and other various elements would be included. Some of these sheets were lost, since brainstorming was done on whatever scraps of paper were around.
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Sketching:
I made fifteen sketches to plan out my original ideas. That is, I sketched what each of the three covers would look like for five different concepts.
Certain themes are present among the sketches. Most notably, I shied away from using any monochromatic palettes. Since the books are made for children, I wanted to use as many high-contrast colors as possible. Another similarity was the use of drawings. Four of my five concepts used drawings of the animal and food for each book. I figured the drawings would also make more sense given the audience.
The third row was my favorite concept, and acted as the starting point for the rest of my work. While many of the ideas from this concept were used in my final piece, such as the tessellation, many others were not, such as the tilted rectangle in the middle.
Color Palette:
An online color palette generator was used to create a scheme which included the shades of blue, pink, and brown that I wanted for my mouse, pig, and moose, respectively. Since the brown was really a shade of the yellow, I decided to use the yellow in my designs as well.
Early Digital Iterations:
First Mouse Attempt:
I was actually pretty pleased with my first attempt at the mouse cover. I enjoyed the way that the high-contrast background popped, and was pleased with my illustration of the cookie. I felt the tilted box in the center had a playful feel. However, my peers and instructors had quite a lot of feedback. Most notably, I was told that the box in the center felt off, the spacing and stroke of the text looked bad, and the illustration of the cookie in the center clashed too heavily with the illustrated cookies in the background. As such, I figured I would try something slightly different.
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First Moose Attempt:
While I was content with my first attempt at the moose cover, I did not appreciate it as much as the mouse/cookie cover. Since my moose and muffins were the same shades of brown, and since that brown had a similar saturation as the pink, the background did not pop in the same way as the mouse/cookie cover. Instead, this one faded into the background, leaving the rectangle as the main focus of the piece. Similarly, I was content with my central muffin illustration, but did not like it as much as the cookie.
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First Pig Attempt:
I was not content with my first pig attempt, and voiced this frustration during my first crit. I felt the pancake illustration looked like a potato. Additionally, I noticed that I outlined the background’s tessellated shapes in black, something I had not done for the previous covers. The yellow in the center of the page bothered me, and overall I did not feel the piece worked as well as the mouse equivalent.
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Color Refinement:
One major concern for my works as a series was the lack of consistency in the backgrounds. My mouse and pig backgrounds used highly contrasting colors to create a popping effect, while the moose cover used very similar colors, resulting in a fading effect. While I figured either result would be okay, I wanted to standardize the backgrounds across the three books. As such, I spent some time revisiting how I would address the colors used. In the end, I chose to add contrast to the moose background so it would match the other two.
Arrangement Refinement:
Since so many of my peers had concerns about the rectangle in the center, I tried playing with the arrangement of both the center piece and the background. Seen here is an attempt to rotate the center to undo the tilted effect. Likewise, I also tried leaving the center tilted and rotating the tessellation in the background to match. Both of these options seemed too square, and no longer conveyed the playfulness that I originally wanted to capture with the tilted design.
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Further Digital Iterations:
Using the advice of peers and instructors, I attempted to revisit the way in which I presented the title of each book. The stroke of the text was replaced with an offset path, and titled, falling words were used to convey the playful feeling originally captured by the central rectangle.
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Final Products:
Final Mouse:
My final mouse piece retained the cookie illustration from the first iteration, but used it on the back cover instead. The background tessellation used the original high contrast colors, and the words “mouse” and “cookie” were enlarged to highlight their importance to the title.
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Final Moose:
My final moose piece also retained its original muffin illustration, using it on the corner of the back page. However, the background pink was changed to be the palette’s more saturated version, and the base of the muffins was changed to be yellow for more contrast.
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Final Pig:
I made a new pancake illustration for the back corner of my pig piece. Since pancake crumbs would not make as much sense as cookie or muffin crumbs, a trail of syrup was used to create the same effect. Additionally, black outlines were removed from the tessellation drawings, and the shapes were edited to be less geometric.
Conclusion:
In the end, I was very satisfied with my final work. I felt all three pieces ended up in a much, much better place than where they started. Additionally, I was pleased with my color scheme and the way in which the jackets conveyed the childish, playful nature of the series. My favorite element was likely the manner in which blue, yellow, and pink were equally used across the three covers. The pieces, however, were obviously not perfect. Most notably, the text on the back ended up being obnoxiously large. Overall, I found the project to be a very enjoyable experience.
Finished Product:
