OUGD406 STUDIO BRIEF 2 - D&AD EXAMPLES OF NOVEL BOOK DESIGN

I found this article from the D&AD Facebook page, and though some of the book covers were quite unusual and interesting, not necessarily designs I could use for my own cover design, but interesting nonetheless.

Puffin Designer Classics - The Secret Garden
"The Puffin Designer Classics are limited editions of six world-famous classic stories created by six leading design figures. They were published to mark the 70th anniversary of Puffin Books, with each designer chose their favourite children's classic. Puffin Books created bespoke books that are also beautiful objects, which look and feel wonderful and evoke the amazing stories they contain."

This books cover is incredibly interesting and delicate both in appearance and physically as well, as I imagine the branches would easily get bent if you placed it in a bookshelf normally. The colourful flower pattern on one of the trees stands out nicely against the otherwise simple but bright green colour of the rest of the cover, except for another tree which has a white pattern on it, adding to the colourful appearance, but in a more understated manner. There is also a book mark ribbon attached to the spine of the book, in a vibrant yellow, which fits in nicely with the colours of nature of the rest of the cover, but stands out being a different colour. The title of the book is red in the middle of the ribbon, in a handwritten style typeface, which adds to the creative and journal style of this cover. There is also a key at the end of this ribbon, which is a reference to the title of this book, and adds to the journal quality of it as well, as journals often have padlocks on them to keep people out and make them private.

Despair / Invitation to a Beheading / King Queen Knave / Pale Fire / Speak, Memory / The Luzhin Defense

"The brief was to redesign the covers for all of Vladimir Nabokov’s books. Aside from being a great writer, Nabokov was also a passionate butterfly collector. The idea for this series was to have a different designer illustrate each title using a butterfly specimen box, which they could fill using only paper and mounting pins."

The colours used in this design are all very similar and striking, complimenting one another nicely, and creating a more unusual sea scene, with the incorporation of green into it. The sea design is very contemporary and simple, contrasting against the serif typeface used for the title and author of the book, which better matches the title itself, appearing more old fashioned and royal. The point size of the title as well reducing, also highlights the importance of each character, the king being the most important, a sexist layout but one item must be first.

This is an extremely different book cover for these series of books than the previous, produced purely in black and white, and using the paper and pin technique much more literally than the previous design. This creates a cluttered appearance, almost looking as if the pieces of paper have been blown into the corner. This could perhaps reflect the content of the book, but is very intriguing and makes you want to find out more. The only problem with this cover is that because of the haphazard style of it, the title is hard to read, with the words being in the wrong order.

Pride and Prejudice / Crime and Punishment / Jane Eyre / The Picture of Dorian Gray"These are cloth-bound, jacketless hardbacks with a single matt foil stamped into the cover. The series uses a unifying grid system: each title has its own appropriate colour combination and repeating pattern. 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', for example, features a peacock feather design that picks up the book's themes of ego and superficiality, while its black and white palette suggests duality and references Aubrey Beardsley. The aim was to produce sumptuous, tactile books that evoke a rich heritage of bookbinding, while retaining a fresh appeal to modern readers; that both stand out in bookshops and have a longevity appropriate to their contents."

This is my own copy of Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice, produced with this cover.

All of these books have a very unified appearance, which helps to group them together as a collection, however because they have their own specific colour combination and imagery relevant to the content of the book, they stand out individually and work as individual covers as well as a whole collection. The matte foil pattern stamped onto the cloth cover adds to the luxurious feel of the book, also making them appear as classic novels, which they are.


Tree of Codes
"In ‘Tree of Codes’, author Jonathan Safran Foer wrote a new narrative by carving it out of an existing book. The design brief was to make the die-cut text obvious, workable and readable, while maintaining an element of surprise to draw in literary, design and art audiences. Sara De Bondt worked closely with Foer to create a book that has the familiarity of a typical paperback, yet allows for a unique, tactile, and almost sculptural reading experience."

I think this is a very clever method of telling a story, one that is unusual and interesting, and makes you think much more when reading it, than you would an ordinary book, as you have to decode it slightly, putting the pieces together.

This research has been relatively useful to me. These book covers are all very interesting and unusual, however a lot of them are a little too far out, or use mediums which I cannot use for my own designs, such as paper cut outs, making them just interesting to look at rather than impacting on my design decisions.