Project 4 Shape & Color
During this project, we explored the combination of shape, color and typeface to design three book covers for a series. We went through multiple iterations so that the book covers work individually and together with coherent graphic style.
I chose a series of books by Italo Calvino. Two of the books (nonexistent knight and cloven viscount)belong to one existing series “our ancestor”, and the third one is one of my favorite by Calvino — Invisible Cities.
These books all explored the question about identity and dichotomy, imagination and the imaginable, and I think designing book covers that capture such quality can be quite challenging but interesting.
I. Information Gathering
The Nonexistent Knight, Invisible Cities, The Cloven Viscount
Invisible Cities:
The book is framed as conversation between Marco Polo the explorer, and the aging and busy emperor Kublai Khan. The book consists of 55 fictitious cities that are narrated by Polo to prove the expanse of Khan’s empire, and they’re presented through short dialogues.
“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”
The Nonexistent Knight:
The book is an allegorical fantasy novel that explores questions of identity, integration with society, and virtue through the adventures of Agilulf, a medieval knight who exemplifies chivalry, piety, and faithfulness but exists only as an empty suit of armour.
“It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the night and gradually reacquire colors, but seem to cross meanwhile an uncertain limbo, faintly touched, just breathed on by light; the hour in which one is least certain of the world’s existence.”
The Cloven Viscount:
The book is a fantasy novel illustrated Medardo the viscount who got cloven in two by a cannonball during his first battle. Patched by doctors, the recovered half returns to Terralba, immediately causes his father’s death, and terrorizes the countryside; it is Medardo’s evil self. Soon his good side returns. Inevitably, the two sides meet, duel, and, because of their wounds, are finally fused into “a whole man again, neither good nor bad, but a mixture of goodness and badness.”
“That’s the good thing about being halved. One understands the sorrow of every person and thing in the world at its own incompleteness. I was whole and did not understand, and moved about deaf and unfeeling amid the pain and sorrow all round us, in places where as a whole person one would least think to find it. It’s not only me . . . who am a split being, but you and everyone else too. Now I have a fellowship which I did not understand, did not know before, when whole, a fellowship with all the mutilated and incomplete things in the world.”
II. Sketches
At the early stage of the project, I explored several different options for graphic representation using complex or simple geometries, monochrome with different gray-scale or multiple colors.
In these early hand-drawn exercise, I tried abstracting representation of each book into a certain kind of symbol, and representing the dichotomy as a repeating theme by splitting the elements in half.
In sketch 1 & 2, the elements of crown & red heart represent the viscount, and the armor as well as the sword represents the knight.
In sketch 3, I explored the use of contrasting color as a way to emphasize and symbolize the question of dichotomy. And in sketch 4, I was looking into using different density of lines to change the value and create the ambiguity of the reading of the space.
And last is an example of my early vision about what a complete book cover could look like with abstract lines extending to the back cover, the technique which I eventually implemented in my final design.
III. Digital Iterations
After testing out all ideas in my sketches, I decided to incorporate another software (Rhinoceros) that I use daily for my architecture modeling. I dowloaded existing mesh models of a knight and a crown, and modeled a series of boxes with various height to represent cities. I contoured the city model to get the lines for the first cover. And for the mesh models, I simplified the mesh surfaces and make 2D to get all the lines, and then selectively choose the ones I want to use.
The feedback given for this round was that the font was hard to read because of the san serifs and thinness and the position of the font. The title on the spine, especially the one for cloven viscount and nonexistent knight was also hard to read because of the conflict caused by the overlaying of red on blue.
In terms of consistency, because the front cover of one book was red and the other two were blue, it was hard to tell that they are from the same series until readers flip the book to the back that echo the color theme. The graphic style for invisible cities is different from the other two generated from mesh models.
Based on these feedback, I was able to make changes and iterate to increase the legibility of content.
In this iteration, I changed to a typeface with wider spacing and breathing room, and I generated line work for the city using the same method for the other two covers by downloading mesh models. And I positioned the title and author all to the right of the front page. I also came back to the idea of using profile line to convey object, and extending it through the spine to the back cover to give a continuous read of symbol across the back and front page.
Based on the feedback on color themes, I chose 3 colors instead of 2 for each book cover respectively. And I used three different values for each color to add to multiple layers of reading. Yet the result seemed to take away from the crisp and clean feel that the complex geometric lines have. The typeface as well as the positioning of the title & author still needed improvement because they were too close to the edge and was hard to read.
I tested out some other illustration for the back cover, but the dots used in the first cover became distracting, so I decided to go with a single color in the final design.
Final Design
After a few iterations of the color theme, I decided to use 3 colors with similar saturation, and changed the orange to a darker green to match the overall feel conveyed by the other two.
I changed the font to a san serif one and used different sizes and thickness to establish hierarchy. Then I bring the profile of the illustration all the way to the back cover, and reduce the amount of text used in the back.
Photographs of Printed Covers
