Brief 1: Book Design
Penguin Books have asked you to design a new house style for a collection of books on design for children and young people. They are starting with three titles: Colour, Typography and Photographs. Produce three covers – front, back and spine. The designs need to be recognisable as a series and at the same time be appreciated for their individual merits. The book dimensions are 190mm wide by 225mm high.
In addition they have asked you to produce the one on Typography, called A is for…Create an introductory chapter of at least four pages.
As I started sketching I was thinking a lot about what might encourage people to pick the book up. I thought it needed to be able to attract adults and young people as adults may be buying it for their children. I’m not quite sure where it came from but I remembered something from a workshop I did a while ago which highlighted how we are hard wired to be able to identify faces and that the eyes are an important element of that. I also came across Joel Meyerwitz’s book ‘Seeing Things’ on talking to kids about photography and the eye became a theme for me. I thought it might work because I could replace the pupil with symbols for each of the books in the series. I played with several versions and mocked up the cover for the colour book.
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- Sketch 5
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- Sketch 1
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- Sketch 2
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- Sketch 3
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- Sketch 4
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- Three cover symbols
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- Colour 1
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- Colour 2
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- Colour 3
I was not as excited about them by the time I had finished as I hoped so I went back to my other sketches. I had decided that the books would be produced as the ‘Penguin Young Designers’ series and thought it might work to have the covers themed under a different era in graphic design (sketch 4). I then chose to look at Pop Art, minimalism, chaotic design, Dadaism, Surrealism and Grunge. I went back through my Pinterest boards and did some more research, and decided I would work up grunge (colour), Dadaism (Photographs) and Pop Art (Typography).
Sketch 4
