Penguin Book Covers - Designs

Penguin Book Cover Designs:

I chose to use a simplistic and silhouette style for all three of my book cover designs. This is because by using bold colours and silhouettes for each of the designs I felt that they would stand out on the shelves amongst other books. I also used the typeface helvetica for all of the books as this is a classic typeface which has been used for the penguin books in the past. I thought that it would be good to incorporate a part of the original designs so decided that keeping the same typeface would be a good way to do that. I have kept my all of my designs to the Marber grid. For all of my designs I have included imagery on the back of the cover as well as the front. This is because I thought that it would be nice to have some relevant imagery on the back which would link to the imagery on the front. I also kept the top half of the back covers bare as I thought it showed some consistency with the front covers by have just the bottom two thirds of the cover possessing imagery. I found that by using this as a layout it was also much more aesthetically pleasing. 

The Fall of Icarus - Ovid:

For the fall of Icarus I chose to use the imagery of a bird flying close to the sun. This is based on the story and representative of Icarus flying to close to the sun with his wax wings. For the back cover I decided to use the flames of the sun. I thought that this looked like a close up of the sun and the danger that Icarus faced. 

The Sandman - E.T.A. Hoffman:

For the design of The Sandman cover I used imagery that intended to represent the eyes of the children being stolen and the threat that Nathanael once had of his eyes being stolen. The figure that I have placed on the back cover is supposed to represent the unknown aspect of the Sandman and the mystery that he holds. 

Lot No.249 - Arthur Conan Doyle:

For the final book cover, Lot No.249 I decided to create the mummy. As mummy are known to be white I decided to use black as the background for the block colour and then use white for the silhouette of the mummy. I think that this worked well as the black background also gives the impression that the story possesses some tension which is representative of the horror genre of the book. I thought that for this cover the mummy was enough imagery by itself so I decided to spread the mummy onto the back cover of the book making this one design the main focus of the imagery representative of this story and for my designs.