Exercise (p.40 OCA Graphic Design): Your brief is to design a stunning and contemporary cover for one of the 20th Century’s most acclaimed authors, HG Wells. When you have a range of ideas and have notes in your learning log, make some rough drawings or sketches to show your ideas.
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- HG Wells mindmap 1
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- HG Wells book cover designs 1
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- HG Wells Book cover designs 2
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- HG Wells mindmap 2
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- HG Wells Thumbnails
I could sense a little hesitation when I first read through the brief, this sounds like ‘proper’ graphic design! Rather than worry about whether I could come up with an appropriate design I thought about the research process. I started with an overarching mindmap drawing out some keywords, identifying research needs, thinking about different angles on the brief and drawing out some of the decision process. This process helped me think about which books I might design the book cover for, secondary online research showed that the most common titles for this sort of exercise seem to be ‘War of the Worlds,’ ‘The Invisible Man,’ ‘The Time Machine,’ and the ‘Island of Dr.Moreau.’
When I looked at HG Wells’ bibliography I came across a number of short stories that I hadn’t read before and decided this was the direction I wanted to take, that way I could perhaps develop something more distinctive. The short stories are full of rich symbolism with a glorious sense of the Gothic; several of them reminded me of Grand Guignol plays. I then decided on the three short stories I wanted to work with and did a further mindmap drawing out keywords for each of the titles. As I did this I had a sense I was starting to visualise how the design might develop, I could see some layouts in my mind’s eye.
In parallel I looked at lots of other examples for inspiration and tried to analyse the designs in terms of what I felt worked and what I might have done differently. I am now deep into playing with typefaces and thinking about which designs I might develop.
