The penguin design awards where students design for puffin book cover for adult book or childs book, this yearschoices of 2 books to design for:james and the giant peach or 100 years of solitude.
i had my mind open to both of them but found 'the hundred years of solitude' hard to work with only knowing a little abit it and not of had read the book. so i did james and the giant peach since i knew the plot and had more knowledge on this book.
(http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/penguindesignaward/puffin_brief.php)
"students are invited to design a whole new cover look for this iconic title, reinventing it for a new generation of readers, encouraging children (and adults) to revisit it and ensuring that it remains an integral part of childhood for the next fifty years.
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 12mm wide)."
i wanted to keep the book recognisable as james and the giant peach, being an iconic book, i wanted to use iconic scene that would do that and use some similarities to the current cover design like the blue background and the spine setting of the text with the way the 2 fonts are used together.
i had a certain style in mind from the image styles i put with my initial ideas ideas so i knew what kind of style i was going for but i wanted to experiment with different mediums for the best outcome.
My idea for my design uses the scene where the peach grows giant after the magic crocodile tongues incident and james climbs in to the peach and i used the title of the book incorporated in to the illustration by having each letter of the title appear like peaches growing off the tree and the word 'peach' was not fitting on so taking part of my idea from my initial ideas i made the word 'peach' appear like it is carved in to the peach.
i found my illustration worked best in a fine liner but it needed colour, it was the least appealing to my target audience without the colour so scanned my image in and found that using the brush tool with the option of different brushes,hardness being soft like a feather or solid hard for the brush, to colour in the image worked very affectively and that the soft like feather of the brush was really good for blending tones together, which can be seen on the peach. so i decided this would be a perfect way to use colour and did the whole image in this way.
This style gives a child friendly,bright and vibrant with colour that will appeal to children being a double spread of the one image gives a different look that can stand out more than the usual design to each front and back cover designs that has been previously been used.
It took a few goes to get the problem solved of the colour and font used on the text trying to fit it to tie in with the illustration, which you can see tried in my development numerous fonts but they where not working it for the design.
I finally found that an arial and motoroil (a font of which i downloaded from dafont.com) worked really well together being a sans serif font , rounded font and easy to read but outstanding at a distance with being a bold font and the ariel being a relatively similar font but just not as bold.
The colours i tried where orange, to carry on from the peach but it was not standing out much, so tried a stroke on this but appeared too much, and not working in to the design well, so after a few colour trials i found the white and black worked best for the majority for the peach just down to the front cover with text placed on the peach was having the same problem aswell, so to follow the carving of the the word 'peach' in to the peach for 'roald dahl' carrying on the same style and for rest of the text of the front, i made this white, this follows the text colour scheme from the spine and the back cover.
I also had the text which is placed on the peach, shaped around the peach, to keep consistency.
The text on the spine was done in the same way as the current cover on the book with the two fonts worked in together, where the 'and the' is a different font.
if i was to do this again the only thing i would change is to move the design over a few inches, so that more of the tree fits in on the front cover.
Overall i think this project went well i was able to pull everything together despite some problem solving of the text which was nothing really, the outcome has turned out quite well and peers have commented on it saying how they liked my design and thought it was good. The only negative feedback i had got was that the front cover with the tree could be moved over half an inch which i agree i think that doing this will be slightly beneficial as it will show a bit more of the tree, which is one of the main features in the imagery however it still works affectively.
I handed my project on time and i even managed to finished the project a day before the hand in date.
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| Final james and the giant peach book cover design |
SWOT Analysis
- Strengths - What did I do well?: i made a final that result in being child like but also appealing to other audiences older than children.
- Weaknesses - What do I need to improve? To improve on my design placement the (anarchy),
- Opportunities - What do I need to do to build on my strengths and weaknesses?
- need to think of the design placement more careful when planning it so that it follows through easily through the development process.
- Pulling the text together with the positioning of the image for a full page spread of the image that will be used on the book cover.
- Threat - What could stop me achieving my goals? if i don't think about the anarchy the design could go wrong.
- Specific - Well defined: i want to improve on my anarchy and getting the text right with the design.
- Measurable - Know when it has been achieved: this will done through the design process of a project from the idea generation,development and the final outcome.
- Achievable – Are the goals achievable: It will be achievable if i follow this through and use my self study time.
- Realistic - Within the availability of resources, knowledge and time: i will look at how the anarchy is used in designs, this may be found on the internet,magazines etc. for support.
- Time Based - Enough time to achieve the goal:Ii will monitor this by next deadline date.
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