Penguin Book Contest.

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For this project, we have been given 4 weeks to create 2 submissions for the Penguin 2021 Student Designer Competition. The contest requires us to create wrap around book covers for their selected book titles, following the guidelines that would be in place as if the design was being used in publication. The three books we could pick from were 'Murder Most Unladylike' by Robin Stevens (Children's Fiction); 'Diary of a Young Naturalist' by Dara McAnulty (Non-Fiction), or 'Girl, Woman, Other.' by Bernardine Evaristo (Adult Fiction). 

​I decided to create covers for 'Murder Most Unladylike' and 'Girl, Woman, Other.' as upon immediate reaction they appealed to me most. Also, I want to illustrate for children's books so I thought it would be smart to specifically take on the children's fiction choice.

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Murder Most Unladylike.

Research.

For this brief option, not only was the requirement a wrap around book cover, but also to create a series logo that can be applied onto all of the future books too.
      I started by carrying out research of the book, so I understood the plot and the way that it was written. After that, I narrowed down my plot notes so I was left with a very brief summary of what the story was and what the cover needed to capture.

I then started to do some visual research using Pinterest so I understood and had reference for the kind of imagery that I wanted to include on the cover in order to effectively encapsulate the feeling of the story.

Cover Design.

I then began the thumbnailing process for the cover design. 

This section took me quite a while as I kept getting frustrated and feeling stuck, so I ended up leaving the thumbnails for a few days and coming back to look at them again. When I looked again, I actually did think that I had come up with some good ideas, so I took my favorite design and began playing with the colours.

At first, I wanted to go for something a bit more girly and playful feeling, however, I didn't feel like it captured the tension and murder mystery side of the story so I began testing more warm colours instead. These colours I felt worked much better for the feeling I was trying to evoke. I also slightly altered my design to feature the two girls on the back on the cover rather than the murderer's silhouette so that the representation of their friendship was also featured.

Cover Artwork Development.

I then moved onto creating my final artwork and adding parts of the text so I had an idea of the font that I wanted to use. To select my chosen font I looked at book covers from the 1930's and image searched using 'whatthefont' when I found a cover font that I liked.

Logo Design.

For the logo design, I wanted to create something that felt like a school reward sticker, but with the feeling of the 1930s. I began by collecting together some 1930's logo imagery on Pinterest so I was more confident with my references.

I then started to sketch up some quick ideas until I landed on something that felt right. Once I had an idea I was quite happy with, I played with the design a little more to see if I could push it any further.

Then I moved onto playing with colours. I wanted to find something that was reflective of the 1930s designs that I had found in my research, but would also work on the cover that I had created.

I felt that the teal colour I had decided on would compliment the colours that I had selected for the cover, and also not distract too much from the overall cover design. I didn't want to go for something very stereotypically feminine as neither protagonists feel like 'girly' girls, so I decided to create smaller pink details featured on the more neutral background.

Logo Final Development.

I began creating the logo using the more blue colour scheme that I had come up with, as initially I felt that it worked the best. However, when looking at the front cover colour scheme, I didn't think that the blue fit very well, and would be too distracting, so I decided to try the more teal colour scheme that I had came up with. Overall, I think that the teal colour was much more effective, and called back to the more washed out colours that were used in the 1930's.

Logo Final.

Book Cover Final Development.

To finish this cover submission, I collected together the cover artwork and logo and placed them both together to create the final piece. As I was doing this, I spent a little longer playing with the text to ensure that it was all legible and all inline with each other. I also realized at this point that I had forgotten to add the path and the road onto the cover, so I also made sure to create that so there was no missing elements.

Initial  Cover.

Final Cover.

After further feedback I amended my cover with any improvements I was given in order to create my actual finals spread.

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Girl, Woman, Other.

Research.

To start my research for 'Girl, Woman, Other' I listened to the audio book on BBC Sounds so I understood the plot and style of writing. I then found this relationship map online so I understood the links between the characters as it was quite complicated and difficult to remember.

I then moved onto creating a Pinterest research board. I started with general artwork, and then went onto looking into African artwork and wax patterns on fabrics.

Cover Thumbnails.

Next, I moved onto creating thumbnails in Procreate, by mocking up the dimensions into smaller proportions, and then drawing on top so I had an accurate idea of the space I was working with fir the cover.

Of all of my thumbnails, I really liked the idea of intertwined bodies to represent the interlinked relationships in all of their forms: familial, friendships, romantic etc. I didn't fully feel confident on any of the ideas I had gotten down yet, so I decided to push around the one that was my favorite at the time.

I was very quickly happy with the main illustration piece of the cover, so I ended up spending most of the time figuring out where I wanted the text to go.
      The next step n the process was to figure out my colour palette. 

At first I wanted to go for something more feminine looking, but I quickly decided that it looked too similar to my protest pack project from last year, so I tried the more earthy colour scheme and felt that it had much more impact and was more successful. As I had extra space once I had chosen my colours, I used the extra space to play with some ideas to enhance the background.

Cover Final Development.

As I knew that I would only have 17 layers on the template document provided by Penguin, I decided that I would create my main illustration piece on a separate canvas so I had as many layers as I wanted. This worked out very well for me as I prefer to keep layers mostly separated while I work, so I didn't have to worry about finalizing parts of my illustration before I was ready.

Next, I took the finished bodies illustration and moved it onto the cover template from Penguin. The background was very quick and easy to get down as it was pretty much just blocked in colours with textures created on top of it. so I was able to move onto playing with the text and deciding on a font.

Initial Cover.

Final Cover.

Similarly with my other book cover, I took on my feedback from my first set of finals and worked upon any improvements. For this cover, I mainly had to alter the colours so they were brighter and had more contrast, add to the back cover, and change the shades of some of the character's skin tones for the main illustration.

In both cases for each cover, I was much happier with the work after I had worked on the improvements I was given.