Penguin Book Cover - Initial designs

Penguin Book Cover - Initial Designs

The first design is a typographic based design. I decided to experiment with the use of photography rather than imagery originally. The words and phrases that I used in the design are all suggested reasons as to why the criminals in the book may have committed the crimes which they did. I wanted these words and phrases to then make up the name of the book title uses the first letters of each one. When I took this idea to the first crit it was evident that the idea was extremely original and the addition of the blood to the cover made it look a little too crowded and made the text more difficult to be read. 

The second as seen above shows the design which I experimented with the use of block colour and silhouette like figures. The meaning behind the design was suppose to represent a broken home in which Perry Smith was isolated by his family. I think that this cover worked quite well however it became clear to me that the cover was not as easy to understand even when someone knows the story. 

The last design which I took to the first crit shows the design which was the favourite at the crit. I wanted it to represent the idea of the bird that Perry dreamt of that would come and take him away from all that is bad. The noose also represents the way in which the killers were executed. The first draft of the design was very rough but I wanted to show the idea in a visual sense to get some feedback. In the crit we talked about using a continuous line drawing or the use of string to make the whole image giving some consistency across the design.