13 March 2018

Design Project; Book jackets

It is no secret my work load has been say... reduced over the last year. Getting new contracts has been near impossible despite some very successful projects in the recent past. I guess a well reviewed design for a book and a nomination for an international Emmy don't really carry much weight these days... at least where I am concerned.

I have been taking up the slack by working on my personal projects, mostly animations. That is fine but I need to keep my design work up as well so I've decided to look trough my personal home library and redesign book jackets for a few of the hardcovers I have. 

So I am going to post my results, experiments and ideas here and hope to get some feedback to keep me on my toes with my graphic design work. My plan is use mostly design techniques but I might also try illustrating a few myself - depending on the book. I will try different styles and looks for each book and maybe even several for each book as I go along.

If I can get money to print these up, I plan to use them in my book collection.

Please: click the images to enlarge to see them in detail.


Frankenstein


I actually did this one before, I think with Pagestream on my Amiga many years ago. I love the Bernie Wrightson illusions for this book and used this one on the old jacket as well. Originally I liked  the stark white over the textured backdrop, but settled (for now) on an old wet plate texture from the days when photo negatives were on glass. I also tried a version with no cover image.




Dracula


I read this books every few years over again and researched 100s of other covers - many of which I found pretty terrible. Again I like a clean look and white as a backdrop would also work for this I think. The skull with wings is a royalty free graphic I slightly changed and I chose a font that was not overly decorative. The blood splatter was something I though I should avoid but then thought this needed little more excitement added. 

2 comments:

T' said...

For critique, I think the typeface for Frankenstein is just too plain. Also, while I like the Wrightson illustration, I think it's just too small. That kind of work really wants to be seen as big and closely as it can because of all the detail. The Dracula I like better. Seems you're going for a more iconic look and possibly a set of looks for the various old monster novels. I'd suggest maybe doing them all at once, trying to get a better feel. It still feels as if there's something missing. I applaud you keeping busy and doing things to stretch yourself. Wish more artists would do that.

Behemoth media said...

Frankenstein is plain maybe even though it's basically my usual design style, the font it maybe too small. (my commercial work involves a lot of white space and smaller elements on the page)I am not looking to make an iconic set of monster novel with this project - though it will 100 % look that way since it appears most of my hardcover novels i want to make covers for are classic horror novels... I have some Vern and Burroughs I could work on but they are also in the genre fiction category!