Book Cover

For this project we had to design a penguin book cover with a topic relating to Graphic Design that we were interested in. As a result in starting to study graphics, typography and fonts have really interested me as they can totally change the perspective and meaning of a word. I firstly researched typography books that already existed and penguin books so that I could link the two styles together.

My first idea was to use newspaper cut out letters to make a word. This was each letter would be a different size, font and possibly colour. The cut out effect also made the paper look mismatched and effected. 

(Author's own photo)

Here I attempted to add colour and change the shape of the cut out to make the image more abstract. I liked this idea however I didn't like the layout of the diagnonal shape the word made.

(Author's own photo)

Here I found some font to inspire me. I edited them on Photoshop to experiment with colour and the way the word looked repeated on the page. 

(Author's own photo)

This was the newspaper effect that I was going for however I changed my mind as this style has been done before and the letters were quite similar. I wanted to add brighter colours so enhanced the contrast however this still didn't stand out enough for me.

(Author's own photo)

This was my final book cover, a flat version. The front cover is very simple with a typewriter font and this was used for typewriters which were the first real print font used. I made the word minimise down the page and desaturated the colour to make the cover eye catching and very plain and simple so that the word is the main focus. I also sliced the word in half and slightly moved the bottom half of the word each time to make an illusion to the eye. The spine was very simple with just the word, written as it's seen in the dictionary. The back cover starts with a dictionary description as many people may not be sure of the word or what the book is about. This provides the information from the start for the audience. 

(Author's own photo)

I used photoshop here to create a mock up of my book design on an actual book to give the idea a real effect.

I really enjoyed this project and it was very open and your book cover was how you wanted the subject to be portrayed. I wanted typography to be portrayed as modern and exciting, not just about font.