OUGD603 - Penguin book cover Competition 2015 - Final Design Submission Boards

OUGD603 - Penguin book cover Competition 2015 - brief and duration time

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN 
Duration: 1 month
Sarah Heal 
Module Code: OUGD603 
Module Title:  Extended Practice 

BRIEF TITLE: 'Oranges are not the only fruit' 

Brief: 
Create a book cover for Jeanette Winterson’s 'Oranges are not the only fruit'  

Background: 
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson 
‘A story of self-liberation for a secular age’ Guardian 
This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God’s elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts. 
At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender,Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is a few days’ ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession. 
‘Many consider her to be the best living writer in this language... In her hands, words are fluid, radiant, humming’ Evening Standard 
Considerations: 
The author name and the title are both immediately recognizable to the target market and as such are crucial elements in the design. 
The front-cover quote should help position and place the book for the market. 

Final Outcomes: 
Your cover design needs to include all the cover copy as supplied and be designed to the specified design template (B format, 198mm high x 129mm wide, spine 14.5mm wide). 

Target Audience: 
We are looking for a striking cover design that is well executed, has an imaginative concept and clearly places the book for its market. While all elements of the jacket need to work together as a cohesive whole, remember that the front cover must be effective on its own and be eye-catching within a crowded bookshop setting. It also needs to be able to work on screen for digital retailers such as Amazon. 
The winning design will need to: 
have an imaginative concept and original interpretation of the brief 
be competently executed with strong use of typography 
appeal to a contemporary readership 
show a good understanding of the marketplace 
have a point of difference from the many other book covers it is competing against 

Tone of Voice: 
'adults' 
Jeanette Winterson's writing is vivid, experimental and imaginative and your cover design should reflect this. 
It should appeal to a contemporary, enquiring and literary readership. 
This book has been chosen because there are many themes and layers within. Try and reflect this in your design. 

Deliverables: 
THE CLOSING DATE FOR ENTRIES IS 12 NOON ON WEDNESDAY 11 MARCH 2015. 
Entries must be supplied in the following format: 
PDF 
300ppi 
CMYK 
5mm bleed 
Ideally colour managed to ISO Coated 39 or ISO Uncoated 29 (optional) 
Trim and crop marks to be included 
Maximum file size 5 meg 
Please include the front cover only on the first page of your PDF and a full cover spread (front, spine and back cover) on the second page of your PDF. 

All entries must be submitted digitally via the submissions site. Entries submitted in any other way, including by email or hard-copy, will not be accepted. 
Reading list: 
'Oranges are not the only fruit' by Jeanette Winterson 

OUGD603 - Penguin book cover Competition 2015 - EVALUATION

In this brief, the main practical skills I have exercised are my interests in professional illustration. The main thing I tried was exporting the vector files to Adobe Photoshop, meaning that I could experiment more with textures, something I didn’t do in second year. This gave the impression of a hand rendered, screen printed feel to a digital submission. During working on BEAR in second year, I found that the files took around 10 minutes to load each time, and hours to print because we did the ‘textures’ as vectors in Adobe Illustrator, as opposed to Photoshop. This technique saved a lot of time but meant that I had to ‘commit’ to the layout and size of the canvas, as the vectors would be difficult to edit once rasterised. This helped me to be more practical and professional, as in the ‘real world’ you would know your canvas size and limitations way before beginning the artwork itself.  I really enjoyed working on this project, as I was feeling quite down about my work prior to this, and feel that it has a strong contemporary folk aesthetic, something I have wanted to achieve for a while.  I didn’t get shortlisted for the competition, which although disappointed, I understand that maybe my concept might not be as abstract as they had been hoping for but I am still pleased at the way it turned out, as it is a strong portfolio piece.

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 - 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.