Project 4: Shape & Colour
Project Description
For project 4, we had to redesign the covers, spines and backs of 3 related books. We explored using shape, colour, hierarchy and illustrative style to create continuity, while making individual covers distinct. We were contstrained to using a maximum of 2 typefaces, 3–4 hues and only illustrative elements to create the covers.
Process
Research and Initial Sketches
I decided to pick 3 books from Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. They were originally published in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and I really wanted to redesign the covers to be more modern and minimalistic than the originals.
The books, inspired by the authors own experiences as a naval intelligence officer, follow British secret intelligence (MI6) officer, James Bond on different missions across the world; primarily against agents of SMERSH, the Soviet counterintelligence agency and SPECTRE, a non-aligned terrorist organisation, in later books. Fleming intended James Bond to be a ‘dull, uniteresting and a blunt instrument of force’ and very quickly in the books we find out about his many traits and idiosyncrasies that are carried through out the books.
Casino Royale: James Bond is sent to play against and bankrupt Le Chiffre, the paymaster for a SMERSH-controlled trade union, in a high-stakes baccarat game in France. With help from CIA agent Felix Leiter, Bond wins the game, but is betrayed by Vesper Lynd, a double agent. Lynd falls in love with Bond and, instead of betraying him, commits suicide.
Thunderball: SPECTRE has hijacked a NATO plane and seized its two nuclear bombs, which it uses to blackmail the western world. Bond is sent to the Bahamas, where he joins forces with Felix Leiter, a CIA agent. Bond meets “Domino” Vitali, the sister of the pilot whose bombs were stolen, who is also the mistress of a wealthy treasure hunter, Emilio Largo. Bond and Leiter suspect Largo and, using a nuclear submarine, track him to the bombs: whilst the submarine’s crew fight Largo’s crew, Bond battles with Largo and is overpowered, but before Largo can finish Bond off, Domino shoots him with a spear gun.
Moonraker: Bond joins M, the head of MI6, at Blades to stop a member, Sir Hugo Drax cheating at bridge. Bond is subsequently seconded onto Drax’s staff on the “Moonraker”, Britain’s first nuclear missile project. Bond discovers that Drax is an ex-Nazi, working for the Soviets; he also establishes that the rocket is not a defence, but is to be used by Drax to destroy London. Bond re-coordinates the rocket, sending it into the North Sea, where it kills Drax.
After Fleming’s death, the James Bond series was continued by several other authors through out the years. I was really inspired by John Gardners’ book covers for the series.
I started off wanting to focus on one particular element from the book and that be the central illustration.
Interim Crit
For interim crit, I had the following cover designs:
The feedback I got back was mainly focused on how the font and placement of type did not fit well with the cover and that it looked a little incomplete. I decided to play around a little bit more with font, placement and colour. I found that it was tough to create continuity with type placement and size between the books with the gun, tank and plane; so I decided instead to have the covers illustrations be different types of guns.
Individual Crit
At individual crit, I was encourages to experiment more with scale and colour. The additional elements coming out of the guns was a little distracting so I decided to move them to the back of the books.
For colour, I was inspired by the above palette and decided to use colours from there and mix it with another complimentary colour. I scaled up the guns to fit the entire cover and have all lines be the same weight. The colour band with the title of the book helped bring continuity across the all the books, but also helped differentiate between them.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I was pretty happy with how the books turned out compared to the initial starting point. I found choosing colour and figuring out placement of induvidual elements to be the hardest part of the project; there were a lot of options which got confusing at times, opening a new document and starting over completely definitely helped a lot with that.
