Project 4: Book Covers
For this project we were asked to construct 3 book covers for a series of our choice using 3–4 hues (plus black and white), 2 font families, and no photographic illustrations.
I chose my series as the popular Japanese graphic novel, One Piece, by Eiichiro Oda. Since One Piece is a 20 year long series, it can be extremely intimidating for new readers to start. I wanted to simplify the diverse cast of characters that served as the usual focus of existing covers to make the series seem less daunting.
Instead, I focused on the travel destinations and symbolism to convey the same theme of adventure and freedom that One Piece is famous for.
Picking a Series
I chose One Piece because it is one of my all time favorite graphic novels that I keep up with on a weekly basis. However, I only started this 20 year series during my senior year in high school so I still clearly remember the experience of picking this up.
The story follows the adventures of Monkey D Luffy, a boy whose body gained the properties of rubber after unintentionally eating a Devil Fruit. With his crew of pirates, named the Straw Hats Pirates, Luffy explores the Grand Line in search of the world’s ultimate treasure known as “One Piece” in order to become the next Pirate King.
Before I was scared to pickup this series because I thought it was already too late since it was ongoing. However when I first made my mind to start, everything was easy to follow. I loved the adventurous nature and the creative destinations of the story. One Piece also does a great job of conveying deeper ideas through a fun and dynamic story. The huge character cast was easy to pickup over time too.
I wanted to share my love for this series with readers that might also be intimated to start like I was.
3 Books:
I chose my 3 favorite arcs of this graphic novel as the books for my book covers. They all had fantastic locations that captured the essence of creativity and fun of this series.
The first book is of the Skypea arc. This is when the crew traveled to an island in the sky that was floating among clouds. It was a beautiful and open landscape.
The second book is of the Impel Down arc. Impel down is the highest level security prison in the One Piece Universe. It is underground and resembles hell. The place is dark and very constricting. This was when the crew’s captain attempted to rescue his brother from prison.
The third book is of the Fish Island arc. Fish Island is a location deep undersea that is similar to Atlantis. It is filled with sea creatures, aquatic vegetation, and underwater currents.
Sketching
For the sketches, I wanted to explore a diverse set of concepts ranging from location representation to symbolism. I initially started 5 different concepts for the 3 book covers. I tried to focus less on the author and other text placement for the sketches. Instead, I focused on the background, main elements, and the title.
The feedback I received from my sketches:
The sketches where you use common elements such as type or illustrations(like the hat) are working well as a series. I would start to consider how color will play a roll in each of these concepts to help unify the series even more. A few of your concepts seem to be a bit all over right now. Focus in on the elements you want to include and begin to think of how placement, color, type, and style will ultimately unite the three covers. My advice would also be start with the hardest cover first, these are sometimes the shortest or longest title, or ones where the imagery might be more challenging.
After the feedback I decided to choose my hat concept and try to integrate some background elements into the covers from other concepts in the digital illustrations. I also started playing around with various color palettes, and started mocking up sizing of text.
I decided to start with Impel Down for my covers since it has the hardest location illustrations.
Digital Illustrations
First Iteration:
During my first iteration I did a general layout and experimented using display fonts and symbols. I wanted to go with the strawhat concept and mix it with some background concepts but I received feedback from our Professor that it seemed as if I was joining together 2 independent concepts. So I went back to the drawing board to try to find a new style of strawhat and redesigned the backgrounds specifically for this theme.
Second Iteration:
For my second iteration I got rid of my display font and focused on getting my strawhat style correct. I added textures to the hat and chose a simplistic background that went well with my concept. I also increased the details of the objects that interacted with the strawhat and did this across all three books.
The feedback I received from my individual session with our Professor is that my backpage and spine fonts are way too large. She also recommended for me to think of ways to play with bleed and use the entire book as my medium instead of each cover section as its own.
Third Iteration:
For my third illustration, I added elements for my second and third books to integrate and link each section of the book cover with elements that spanned across them. I also decreased my font and changed how my spine was structured. Lastly, I added a treasure map on the backside as a treat for people who have collected all 3 books.
This iteration was critique by the whole class and I received numerous invaluable critiques from my fellow peers and professors. Most people liked my treasure map on the back but they pointed out my illustration was a bit tacky.
They also felt that the lines seemed like an accident and should not be there. Furthermore, many felt my font sizes on the back were still too big after my initial reduction.
Final Iteration:
For the final iteration I removed the black outlines for each page since it looked unintentional and tacky for the printed version. I also changed the sizing of each section since the book did not fold as well as I expected to. In addition I changed the illustrations on the backside.
I also adjusted the typography to better fit the adventurous nature of the series and again decreased the font size of my back cover. Lastly, I changed my overall font sizing to emphasis hierarchy more and added the publisher name on the back for ease of reading order.
