Penguin book: designs

Design Idea 1

In my first design idea I took inspiration from the idea of red and blue shift observed in space.
When objects move further away from us their light shifts to the red end of the spectrum and their wavelengths get longer. When onbjects move closer to us, their light shifts to the other end of the spectrum, making their wavelengths shorter and more frequent. This produces the colur blue, hence red and blueshift.
Stephen Hawking talks about this phenomenon when explaining this theory on the expansion of the universe, so I thought this would be a good element of the book to portray on the cover.

fig 1

In development of the design, I paired the red and blue wavelengths with a plain background so as not to distract from the text or light waves. Using just one of each line on the cover looked odd due to the difference in the wavelengths. Adding more waves to the design evened out the appearance. 
Altering the typeface from Futura in initial designs, to Gill Sans made the cover seem more professional and seamless. Also a textured cream background coupled with this typeface lended more to the old looking aesthetic I researched in diagrams and wanted to portray in the cover. 

fig 2

I decided not to carry on with this idea as I felt I could produce something more professional looking that better conveyed the themes of the book.

Design Idea 2

fig 3

Another design I wanted to explore more was the idea of space diagrams. I was inspired by this artistic diagram I found of the solar system. The muted colours and simple but beautiful represenation of the planets in orbit around the sun contrast well against the dark background and I wanted to see if I could replicate this in an even more simplistic form on my own cover.

fig 4

In my cover design the planets orbiting the sun extend from the bottom left corner. The planets are simple filled circles as opposed to filled with patterns to imitate the appearance of actual planets. Pluto is on a dotted line to show that it while it isn't technically a planet it is still within the system, and the Earth, instead of a circle is a cross to show where we are in the system. I have chosen a palette of muted colours against a dark background to replicate space. Having a dark blue background as opposed to a black one adds a bit of depth to the illustration, a black background would have made the cover a bit flat.

As with design idea 1 I began to arrange text using Futura - the typeface is modern and futuristic so fits the theme of space well. I decided to alter it to a condensed version of the typeface and it looked a lot sleeker.

fig 5

After initial experiments, I took the design from thumbnails to the template. This allowed me to work more with the space I had available, as well as add in the additional text. Taking colours from the planets, I applied these to the subheadings and I applied the same colours to the quotes needed on the back cover. Adding the colours in break up the amount of white text both in the titles and blurb - pulling the colours from the illustration ties the cover in together.

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fig 8

I also experimented by adding a slight texture to the background of the cover (fig 7) to give the appearance of a slightly starry expanse of space, but I thought that the plain background (fig 8) was cleaner and worked better against the simplicity of the illustration and bold text.

fig 9

Design Idea 3 

For my final idea I wanted a more abstract cover. The first and second are fairly obvious, using lightwaves and an illustration of the solar system, and I wanted to do something that could be construed as more artistic. 

From my previous design I really loved the layout I ended up with, the illustration in the middle of the page and the text arranged above and below. As it worked so successfully, I wanted to apply the same layout in my next design, but change the content.

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fig 18

The cover design features lines extending from the circle centre of the page, this represents a black hole. I was inspired the idea of black holes and how nothing can escape them, the lines represent things being sucked into the black hole (light/objects such as planets etc). I wanted to differentiate between the lines so altered them, every other is dashed to provide some variation. I knew I wanted a dark background again to portray the space theme, but I also wanted to add in some colour. Changing the lines from white to a yellow/gold and electric blue made them pop against the dark background and also provided me with an opportunity to add some colour into the titles and quotes on the back cover in the same way I did with my previous design. The yellow colour could be taken a step further and foil could be used in the printing process to add more dimension to the cover and stand out against the dark background. 

Initially all the lines extended the full height of the page (see fig 15), but after adding the text (fig 16 and 17), I decided to add a clipping mask to the illustration (fig 18) so that the text is not placed on top of any of the design. This makes it look cleaner and also it is a lot easier to read when displayed on a shelf.

fig 19