Past book cover designs
I decided to carry out some further contextual research in order to put my book cover design in comparison to the previous designs for A Short History of Everything; this would allow me to see how other designers conveyed the books themes and how strong they are in terms of visual communication.
There is a strange formality with this design; the serif typeface used almost gives the book a traditionally text book impression, which in a sense does link to the concept of science. I feel like the colour palette used is very dull; this contradicts the books' reputation for being entertaining and enthusiastic. I think that the choice of featuring the earth is very cliche; arguably this is very point blank and straight to the theme of 'everything', but it lacks a sense of curiosity that Bill Bryson has.
The layout of this design is very basic, and kind of ugly in my opinion; it follows a very strict rule of simply having the hierarchy of image below text, which is a very basic book cover design. In terms of this layout, it doesn't really communicate any ideas and the text could at least be exciting to provide intrigue to audiences. However, in a sense, the designer probably considered the fact that traditionally, non fiction readers probably do not care about 'exciting' book covers; I want to combat this concept in my own work, as I feel like the book cover should have some sort of personality to actually convey the themes of the book itself, and the sense of voice of the author - instead of just a simple illustration with very bland text. Also, there seems to be a very strong obsession with featuring the planet in these book covers? Which I am definitely going to avoid.
The idea behind this cover is slightly more interesting conceptually; I think its intention is to be a play on 'the creation of Adam' by Michelangelo, which is kind of witty and even links to the themes of the book itself. However, visually, this design does not fit into any sort of rule or design principle, which makes it look very busy and too flat. Penguin books themselves said that they want simple yet effective designs; this definitely does not possess that design confidence, as there is a severe lack of negative space, which doesn't provide any sense of curiosity to link to the book. This concept could be improved so much more visually if it was simplified, as I actually think the Michelangelo concept is pretty witty/clever.
Akin to the previous book covers, this design still features a globe and is very cliche in the message it conveys; I think it would be a lot more interesting if the cover wasn't obvious and actually intrigued the audience - the book is essentially based of this human curiosity. The typeface in this design definitely doesn't fit in the context of contemporary design, and I don't think that the use of 3 typefaces is really necessary. However, it could be argued that this miss match of type is kind of playful; which loosely fits into the childlike nature of Bill Brysons' writing?
How can I transgress from these designs?
One key thing that I am going to ban from my own designs is featuring a planet/ globe in the book cover; gathered by this research, I've learnt that its just way too obvious and boring; the point of the book is to make science exciting to the everyday person, so I want to have an exciting/ interesting concept. The main goal for my design development is to find niche facts that I can translate into image or text manipulation; this will build a sense of curiosity that fits into the themes of the book. Also, creating some kind of playful design will set my design apart from the boring traditional aspects of the non fiction genre; I want the atypical non fiction reader to realise that book designer does matter - and that globes aren't effective (we all know its about the earth).
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