OUGD603 - Penguin book cover Competition 2015 UPDATE

Today was the announcement of the shortlisted entrants for the Penguin Book Cover competition. Unfortunately, I wasn't accepted, but I'm not too disappointed since I really enjoyed creating the work and it's been a strong contribution to my portfolio, even if it wasn't what they were looking for. 

I'm looking forward to seeing the winning resolution in a few months time.

OUGD603 - Peter and Paul Interior Space Competition - development

It's been a few months since me and Roxxie last presented our work to the senior management team, graphic design and Peter & Paul, and even though our idea was rejected, we decided to pursue and finish the design as if it were chosen, and present it as a conceptual mockup in our portfolios. 

Since the last post, this is as far as we got. Since then we took the design, scanned it and took it into Adobe Illustrator.

We did the initial digitisation way back in January, and sitting here only three months later I'm already thinking I would do it differently knowing what I know now. I traced over each letter using the pen tool and a mouse, when now I wouldn't doubt using my drawing tablet and playing around with line thickness to create the same effect, only it would take me a day, not two weeks! 

I was responsible for the lettering at this stage, whilst Roxxie was more about the grapes, vines and leaves. 

I then added the shadowing detail, again I would do it so differently had it been a few months later. I added the shadows as a bunch of shapes with gradients in them on top of the design. I don't know what I was thinking of! Because when it came to adding in the 'to' ...

.... I used my drawing tablet and added the shadows in Photoshop with the brush tool. Took about two minutes!! 

And you can't even tell the difference! 

I then moved onto the fountain. I started with the concave shell shape above the tap, by drawing a set of gradiented circles in a semicircle shape. I decided to use the pen tool to create two straight edges on each one, after seeing a teardrop tutorial in first year.

Then after messing about with the gradients, ended up with something like this.

Roxxie did the tiles design, but I rearranged the pattern so that the tiles were equally spaced apart like a tiled wall might be. I really liked the spacing she previously created, but felt like the rest of the design was already busy enough and perhaps this is a section we could pull back with.

The design so far. The yellow thing bottom left was to become the tree.

After using the pen tool to 'fill in the gaps' of the vine, it was difficult to make the tree flow seamlessly. I wanted the type to be left kind of on it's own, meaning that the bush had to become thinner near the top of the design. I took colours from the image on the right as inspiration for the fat branches for the tree on the left. I decided at this point to import the whole design into Photoshop to add textures and to add leaves and drop shadows.

We wanted the drain pan of the water bottle filler sink to be like the bowl beneath a wall tap. So I took a mash of different images like this one, layered them up and took pieces of each one to create a textured design.

I also used loads of different brushes to add splashes.

I planned out where the leaves were going on the vines and tree. I mainly wanted the leaves over adjoining sections so the transitions of tree and thinner vines wasn't so harsh. Here you can see all the other textures on the tiles and tree trunk, complete with a little grass. I put in a drop shadow on the tree itself. 

Progress

The design so far.

More leaves

The stone texture I used to layer up on the stone fountain.

I then followed a tutorial to create my own water stream.

I used the layer style options to create a 3D effect for the 'engraved' text.

Closeup of the fountain complete with textures.

Closeup of the tree textures.

OUGD603 - Penguin book cover Competition 2015

I decided to participate in the Penguin Design Award - my chosen brief being the Adult Non Fiction Award - the novel is 'Oranges are not the Only Fruit' by Jeanette Winterson.  

• This coming-of-age story is about a young girl brought up into a strict, almost cult-like catholic society only to discover that she falls for one of her female converts.

  It was requested that the cover reflect the many 'levels' of the story and so I wanted to incorporate that visually. Although this story is based around sexual orientation, it is my understanding that is mostly about bravery and self discovery, so I kept the cover as abstract as possible.
• 
  

After discovering studio MinaLima's quirky and bright screenprint designs I wanted my design to show this same hand-made/ personal feel. I wanted readers to feel in touch with the book on a personal level - the story is very relatable for lots of readers, too.

For the design I was mainly influenced by the story of Adam and Eve not only because of it's relations to Catholicism, but also because of it's themes of breaking the norm and picking the 'forbidden fruit' - most traditionally depicted as an apple - hence oranges are NOT the only fruit!

I went for a very flat style - not only because this can be achieved well in adobe illustrator, but because it is 'trendy' and it was requested that the design appeals to a 'contemporary, enquiring and literary readership.' Here in this image I am tracing over a photograph in Illustrator of a sketch I did of a hand for picking the apple.

A very flat screenprint-like style was adopted for the oranges adorning the cover.

I chose the typeface 'Krona One' from google web fonts because not only was it free for use, but it had the same vintage-contemporary feel to match the illustrations. I had a very vivid idea of how I wanted it to look and moved in straight-away with the right aligned type. I wasn't worried about the fact that 'Oranges' was split over two lines, as this only contributed to the contemporary feel.

The request from the brief for lots of 'layers' to the design invited a gradient background in my eyes. I enjoy competition briefs such as this as it gives me a chance to do something I want personally - although answering to the brief, the briefs are usually quite open to interpretation.

I started to draw the apple here - I didn't start with any pre-computer sketch for this as I wanted the rogue curves of the pen tool dictate a more obscure shape for the apple.

I wanted the apple to stand out the most so I made it the most detailed.

However, when I put it into the design so far it was already far too busy. This is also the reason I didn't include the serpents head, just it's body - as there were far too many focal points. 

So I made the apple white. So now here you can see that there are lots of things going on! 

At this point I hadn't even considered where the front and back cover text were to be, so I have to confess it was on-screen trial and error!

I imported the whole design into photoshop and gave the design lots of treatment with brushes and textures to create a more 'hand made' feel.

Here I am still playing around with the given text for the back and front covers.

Here is the final design. In the end I went for a more subtle approach with the serpent by making it thicker and therefore a better backdrop for the bright oranges, white text and features. I chose a simple sans serif font to compliment the 'Krona One' font featured for the title. All in all I really loved this quick-turnaround project which I got to treat as more of an illustration piece and get to try out some new techniques (screenprint style brushes in photoshop).

Link to the Behance post about this project can be found here.