Graphic design movements | Graphically Speaking

Brief 1: Book Design

Penguin Books have asked you to design anew 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.

Sketch 4

I started by developing the book covers based on the initial sketches (sketch 4).

: Colour cover

: Photographs cover

: Typography cover

As there was additional pages design involved in the Typography book I researched the main Pop Art characteristics:

Repetition
Recognizable imagery
Bright colours
Flat imagery
Celebrity/advertising images
Hard edges
Mundane reality and irony
Influence by comic books, newspapers and photographs
Consumerism and mass consumption
Blocks of colour

From this I developed a range of symbols in Illustrator as well as sketching a basic layout. The biggest challenge seemed to be the wording and content, more so than the layout itself! It took me a while to decide what I would include in the first few pages. In the end I went for some background to typography and what I hoped would be some attractive exercises. I was a bit concerned that I had used a pop art approach in a previous assignment but I felt like my skills had moved on since then and I could be much bolder than I had been, I hoped that it would show my development.

I was still a little concerned that the book title is ‘A is for…’, which suggests a younger age group and an alphabet type book. I decided to overcome it by not making an obvious link and using A as the starting point for a voyage into typography, rather than a direct link to the words. I still wonder if young adults might be put off but hopefully the pop/graphic novel style would be attractive enough.

The design of the pages went through four main iterations as it developed:

: V1 – pg. 1

: V1 – pg. 2

: V1 – pg. 3

: V1 – pg. 4

: V2 pg. 1

: V2 pg. 2

: V2 pg. 3

: V2 pg. 4

: V3 pg. 1

: V3 pg. 2

: V3 pg. 3

: V3 pg. 4

: V3 pg. 5

: V3 pg. 6

I was looking for the beginnings of a book that was dynamic and interesting. I have used typography, colour, and layout (in other words pulling together all the elements of GD1) to try and achieve it. It took a little while for my ideas to surface but once they had I could see the direction I wanted to take. I printed each version as I went as I found it helped me identify issues I had missed on screen, like the stroke around the text box on page two, version two.

Final cover design

: A is for… page 1

: A is for… page 2

: A is for… page 3

: A is for… page 4

: A is for… page 5

: A is for… page 6

I think the final version has a good degree of consistency even though I have tried to mix the format up throughout the pages. I am pleased with the result, not so much from the design point of view but because I can really see how my worked has evolved throughout the course and how my confidence has built.

Rework

Following feedback from tutor, which suggested in the politest possible way I had fallen into a common novice trap I did some rework on the covers. He highlighted that my chosen design appeared to have been designed as if the front and back covers would be seen at the same time and that they needed to be more distinct yet still being connected. I have therefore taken elements of front and back and worked them up further.