Introduction to Final Project

For the final project our goal was to re-design an existing book of our choice. I don't do a lot of reading but realised if I was going to be designing a book cover I would need to know a good amount of detail about it so I could capture it's tone, therefore I wrote out a list of the books I had read and knew about.

Usually the only books I read are autobiographies. However when I looked at the market for these I found most of them were quite unimaginative and simply had the person's face plastered on the front. Because of this I decided that designing for a fictionally piece was the way forward.

I considered Harry Potter but felt that the illustrations on the books were good enough and would have been hard to improve. In the end I decided upon William Goldings: Lord of the Flies. A book that I'd studied and knew about in detail.

Title: Lord Of The Flies

Author: William Golding

Published: 1954 (Faber and Faber)

This is the cover that I am familiar with.

I think the most interesting thing about this cover is its composition. It has an unusual line which the eye follows. I was attracted to the title first and then down and left to the snake. Although it is unusual I personally don't like it. It looks awkward and out of balance. The negative space at the bottom doesn't work for me. If I saw this book on a shelf next to others it wouldn't stand out to me. Although the colours are bright nothing jumps out. The font is quite bland and doesn't reveal much about the genre of the book. The snake is irrelevant to the book and isn't particularly eye catching either so for me serves no purpose.

Despite the negatives I like the colours that the illustrator has used. Yellow (a colour that is thought to stimulate nerves) reflects the excitement and adrenaline in the story. Orange is a high energy colour which again reflects well. The blue is an interesting choice and isn't a usual snake colour which leads me to believe the illustrator chose it deliberately to create a message. Blue usually denotes sadness or calm, both of which could relate to the story. The book has tragic moments and so is sad in places and also has a "calm before the storm" moment when everything is peaceful.