Your Brief
The brief for this assignment is to design three book covers (front, back and spine). The first two are covers for the classic Robinson Crusoe novel by Daniel Defoe. The first must be a deluxe edition book, with a classic design for book collectors and armchair readers. The second would be a pocket edition book with a more practical design “for readers on the move, reflecting the adventurous nature of the story”. The third book breaks from the pattern as it is a “how to” guide to being a castaway called Washed ashore: The ultimate guide to surviving on a desert island.
Research and Ideas
I started to research by first looking up various covers on the internet and in my local book store for each category.
The covers I found most inspiring for my Deluxe edition book were on Pinterest, so I created a board for them there. I noticed that while there were plenty of designs with wonderful illustrations the books I gravitated towards had a simpler design with a single bold color for the background and a golden embossed design.
For the pocket book, I analyzed all books that were small enough to fit in my hand or that would fit in a large pocket. I had the idea to look up prayer books, since those are books carried in one’s pocket which are also practical in design because they are meant to be read frequently and carried around for a long time. These are design features that match the “readers on the move” requirement of the brief.
For Washed Ashore I looked up survival guides. These designs tend to feature bold colors and stenciled fonts, sometimes with a image of the particular danger they promise to help you survive.
While thinking of the part of the brief about readers on the move, I looked up some different sorts of binding that are practical while traveling.
The various covers I gathered images of gave me some ideas as to in which direction I wanted each design to go. The deluxe cover would have a simple, but classic design with a jewel-toned background and gold embossing. The pocket edition book would be small and more modern in design. For the sake of practicality, it would either have a very solid covers (something waterproof), or a leather cover. And finally, the survival guide would feature the sea and the island in some way, in great contrast with the typography which will be bold and stenciled.
Present Visual Outcomes
Each design started out as a series of thumbnail sketches.
Out of my sketches, I most liked two of my ideas, one with the ship and one with Crusoe himself in profile. These are both classic elements of the story, and therefore instantly recognizable on the shelf. I drew both designs in Photoshop, using paintings of old ships and other illustrations of Crusoe (mostly by N.C. Wyeth) as reference.
Around these two designs, I experimented with various fonts until I found one which I felt suited the vintage design of the cover.
The back I kept even simpler than the front, but the spine has nearly all the elements that the front cover has, including the illustration, in order for the book to be easily spotted just by the spine while sitting on the book shelf.
I went in a couple of directions with this design. First, I tried a more playful, modern look by drawing a minimalist palm tree and then with an illustration of Crusoe’s parrot. Then, I tried using a photograph of a single footprint (another iconic element). But in the end, I decided to use the leather-bound idea. I thought it matched the deluxe edition better. It is not a matched set, but the leather binding is more in line with the deluxe gold-embossed edition than the playful parrot design would be. I tried to give the design a more modern look by taking the concept of the reader-as-a-traveler further and making the book look like a journal. The font I used for the title is in cursive, and almost looks like a signature. So the deluxe edition becomes an official printing of Crusoe’s story, while the pocket edition is like a notebook penned by the man himself.
This book shifts from the theme a little, so I allowed the design to shift too. The brief requires that the book both reflect practical advice and the adventure the castaway experience has to offer. The “adventure” bit I showed with the imagery of the island and the vibrant colors, while the practicality remains in the typeface. I painted the covers myself using digital painting techniques in Photoshop.
After finishing up the designs, I did my best presentation-wise, but I couldn’t really print them and bind them at home. So I created three dimensional representations of the books and composed them together the way I’ve seen books in advertisements before. It was the best I could do, though it somewhat limits the experience of a book.
I imagine the deluxe edition book would be the largest and that it would be classically bound, perhaps even with raised bands on the spine. The pages would be thin and not pure white; easy to read in the lamplight. This edition would also have reprints of the original engravings for the book.
The pocket book would have thin pages and small text by necessity. Even though Robinson Crusoe is not a long novel the pocket book is too small to afford large text and thick pages. The cover would be made of faux-leather and it would be embossed with the “signature” of the character.
The survival guide would be a little simpler: soft-covered and perfect bound. Both the cover as well as some pages would be glossy as to keep the colors vibrant. The paper would be perfectly white and the design within peppered with photographic examples of whatever the book is describing.
