H.G. Wells

As my personal project over christmas and the past couple of weeks, I chose the H.G.Wells cover design. After working on two quite open, experimental briefs already this term I wanted to work on a brief where there was a final outcome set out at the beginning so I had a direct idea of what it was I had to produce. I chose to work on another competition brief as I find it difficult to write my own briefs or work on something really personal to me so thought this would be a good brief to get stuck in to to work more with typography and layout.

The main aim of the brief was to create a 'stunning and contemporary cover look' for a set of H.G.Wells novels. Known mostly for his science fiction novels I needed to brand these as a series of social novels, something different for H.G.Wells - I needed to attract the young target audiences attention, create a contemporary feel and surprise the reader that it is H.G.Wells.

To me a contemporary design is a simple design and it immediately sparks to me a clean white background. This is what my design concept is based on. I knew from the start of the brief that I wanted to avoid using photography as I have used that in my previous two briefs so wanted to steer in a different direction - this was also because a lot of cover designs, particularly H.G.Wells use photography or predominant imagery so I wanted to go for a very different cover look.

The three covers I chose were Kipps, Ann veronica & Love & Mr Lewisham - mentioned in the brief are the key topics touched upon in these novels; feminism, consumerism/materialism and love - it is these elements that I have based my designs around. I chose these three novels as they each cover a different social topic, and I wanted to show how they could all link together as a set.

My design concept is a clean simple basis. Limiting the colour palette to white with one accent colour, helps to give the contemporary feel and establish the covers as a set. I have created a pattern design for each novel based on the topic covered - the pattern is used as a subtle background feature on each cover and would be printed using spot uv in industry - white on white so the pattern would catch the light, but not be too overpowering. I wanted to keep some elements of a traditional novel, so chose to use a book jacket - I wanted this to play a part in the design so I have used all elements of the jacket, mirroring the pattern design and accent colour on the jacket inside.

My whole basis was about being contemporary and creating something different - again I have used the novel's blurb in a more interesting way, choosing the key element within the pick out as the back cover information:

Kipps - 'rise to riches'

Ann Veronica - 'work, love, live'

Love and Mr Lewisham - 'curiosity, flirtation, conflict.'

The full blurb is written on the jacket inside, but hopefully the snippet of information of the back cover will intrigue people and make them want to read more.

I have tried to take into consideration all elements of the cover design and I feel I have created a contemporary cover look - something different to other novels. I have created a logo/icon to represent the title of each novel.

Below are photographs of the cover mock-ups and my assessment development boards:

The pattern design is quite difficult to see as it is a background feature - the printing process used would really enhance this and make more of a feature of it.

Thats nice...

A few things I have come across in the past couple of weeks that have caught my eye...

I'm not sure where I got them all from so will try and find out, but thought I would post them up anyway!

A nice typographic poster created by students at Falmouth University - promoting their graphic design course...

.

Something I came across whilst researching for my recent book covers project (I will blog about this shortly) I forgot to note down who's the workis, but this is a very creative way of creating a book cover and it really catches your attention. It must have taken a long time to create, but the final piece is a beautiful, delicate cover.

Promotional piece for serialcut design studio - "The word ideal has universally positive connotations." - Serial Cut is Madrid based studio, established in 1999 by Sergio del Puerto, working on a wide variety of worldwide projects, but focussing mainly on Art Direction. Below is another self promotional piece of their work - since working on the LBi brief installation pieces have caught my eye much more - each letter and object is precisely positioned using fishing wire to create the image below and it looks great!

A creative set of draws, made by Kent & London

Attention to detail...

Having created our final images for the LBi brief, Kathryn and I have had a selection of the images printed as postcards to present one of our main promotional ideas.

We ordered the prints and the package arrived on Monday. I have to totally agree that the presentation of something really does make it more appealing to look at and open. Although only an online printing company, they had put consideration into packaging our prints and it is the attention to small details that makes the difference! Maybe I only noticed it so much because I am a designer but it was appreciated!

The end of silence...

After a lot of hard work over the past few months, I now have a finished document for my silence project.The handmade book called, 'The house on Deeps Lane,' documents my visit to the abandoned, derelict house, taking the reader on a tour through the house with a series of my photographs, accompanied with my written thoughts and feeling whilst being in there.

During the time working on this brief, I have experimented with numerous different final solutions before reaching my final idea. Although initially I found this brief quite challenging, I now realise it has challenged me in a good way, making me be more experimental and not just jumping into creating a final piece. At times I did find this to be a struggle but eventually after a lot of mock-ups, prints, prints, prints and more prints I have reached my final design. Below are some images of my final hard-back book and a development piece of some of my photographs -

I experimented with a range of different paper stocks to print my photographs on and really like the effect the textured water colour paper gave to the images. As this is a heavy paper stock that was too thick to bind into my book I printed a selection of 6 images on to the paper as cards and made a folder to hold them as part of my development. I used some of the wallpaper inside the folder to continue the theme throughout.

The final book....

I have to say a massive thank you to Lucy May Schofield for her help on Monday! I am really pleased with finished piece, and can see a clear development from the mock-up I made before christmas. The book cloth used is the same colour as the front door to the house, giving the sense that you are entering the house. I made a tracing paper jacket to wrap around the book, on to which the title is printed. Tracing paper is used in the book and using it as a jacket helps to represent the idea of seeing through the house. The design I created hopefully paces the reader as they go through the book, with single words taken from my monologue, asking questions and making statements.

Time to update...

Its been a couple of weeks since my last blog as I have been very busy getting ready for assessment....so its time for an update on what I've been up to, here goes!