Book Cover - Idea Development

Development:

Used paper cutting as my technique for trying out an idea for a cover. This one is more of an alternative cover, more to find out how capable my paper cutting skills were at after not trying the technique for a while.

The first castle design (figure 1)  made with the paper cutting was originally for the fairy tale collection book. Once the decision was made for the cover to just be for the Snow Queen story the castle needed to change as the aesthetic of it did not fit the theme. To rectify this the castle was redesigned, with an extra layer to add depth and icicles were added. the same tree front was used as forests feature in the story and created a nice boarder around the main image, as seen in figure 3.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3 

 The text in figure 2 and 3 would also work better if it was in the empty space surrounding the trees as it is currently an appealing format as the book currently is for an alternative cover that is more aimed as a collectible. 

The paper cut cover scene in figures 1-3 were inspiration to design a crown in which a snow queen (Rebakah who kindly modeled for me on these test shots to show the idea) would wear a crown, that had layers inside it to create an extra dimension, as if to express the amount of book pages and short stories that made up The Snow Queen story (snow queen is made up of 7 short stories)

Above is the first book cover made. It didn't have the correct appeal, it lacked enough thought and consideration for the audience had been forgotten. Went back and looked through the photographs of the paper crown again to pick out some different ones which I could use.

Instead of trying to fix this cover I moved on and started on a fresh canvas.

This cover was made to be all white to try and resemble the icy cold harshness of the snow queen. Tired out different options on the curves option bar. Screenshot above was preferred because of the frozen look the blue colour gives off. The shadow makes it appear spooky and unsettled.

Attempted embossing paper. I had never done this before using the printing press at the Market Hall, needed help to turn the handle to run it through though as my elbow was too weak.

On the book cover I would like to have snowflakes embossed or made shiny, so they aren't a part of the image you look at but if the book is picked up and looked at the different lighting makes it more obvious.

 Wrote out some fonts that I found appealing for the cover. This took up a lot of time though and this method of choosing a font for the book was dismissed as there is limited time.

Bookcover 2

Second Book Cover

Using the photographs from the crown photoshoot I attempted another book cover.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Tried out different fonts, a few (most of the ones above in fig. 1) were from a freefont website to experiment with more decorative and less common fonts. Unfortunately many of the fonts that I found the most appealing weren't giving the correct 'feel' of the time period or style of the book though. It would have been at this point where if this was commissioned or led by an employer that their input for the typeface would have been most useful as trying to pick and choose the typeface wasted a fair amount of time, slowing down the whole process of it all.

Figure 3

More examples of different fonts tried out.

Reflection of the crown was altered so less was visible because if it had been on broken glass like the overlay used, the image of it would have been broken up and more abstract in appearance, which before was not the case. 

Figure 4

Figure 5

A couple screenshots above showing a few more final alterations made to try and keep the whole aesthetic together.

Final goal once the cover was completed was to design a GIF 

What I'd do next.

Mostly focus on the GIF. Slow down the text, have the sparkles glisten more, maybe make a few smaller. Change the text used that moves, maybe just have the word chilling fade in and out. Ideally with an interesting font. The current GIF is like a salesman shouting at you and is just too quick.

Photo-shoot

Photo-shoot

These photographs have all been edited, using photoshop cs3. A couple shots show the curves and levels that were altered to try and achieve the desired overall feel of the image. Cold and harsh but magical and regal/powerful.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

As the theme is the Snow Queen, I wanted to have the crown feature in the book covers. I have already created the paper crown by this point but to experiment I went out and bought a plastic crown. I vacuum formed it (which is how the crown lost one of the stars) so I could then create an ice crown (see below)

Figures 1-5 were taken of the plastic crown after vacuum forming, a star broke off but this did not deter me. Photographed with two studio lights and the crown sat on top of an acrylic sheet to get a reflection.

Figure 6

Figure 7

Figure 8

Figure 9

Setting up the photo-shoot for the ice crown was refreshing as it has been a while since I last used my own camera. Dealing with the melting ice was the biggest issue I faced as well as trying to use the manual focus lens as my wrist wasn't able to hold it up steadily for very long. Using a tripod solved this problem though. i struggled to always get the back drop dark enough with the lighting and white walls in the background.

Figure 10

Figure 11

Figure 12

Figure 13

Figures 10-13 

The aim for this section of the photo-shoot was to capture a more abstract approach with these images. I did crop these in the editing stage.

The strong contrast between the background and ice in the forefront is visually appealing and doesn’t allow for any colours to come into it. This is perfect for what I was aiming for though because the Ice Queen is cold and uncaring, the lack of colour helps to  visually create this.

The photograph in Figure 10 with the reflection showing, gives the viewer  more to look at, it adds an extra dimension of detail that is representative of the mirror (mentioned at the start of the snow queen story) and mirror shards which distorts the perspective of the person who has a shard in their eye or heart.

Figure 14

Figure 15

Figure 16

Figures 14-16
The aim with these edits (figures 14-16) and original photographs was to try and show the glitter inside the ice. In person you could easily make it out but when it came to photographing, the camera was not able to capture it. The most successful shot is figure 15 because there is more sense of reflection and depth and the glitter is more obvious too.

Book Cover 1

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Screenshots from the book cover, in Photoshop, showing some of the different typefaces considered (figures 1-5)

The white text blends too much into the crown and gets washed out as your eye doesn't know where to focus.

Figure 6

Figure 7

Figure 8

Figure 8 is the original photograph used for the cover of the Snow Queen book.

Figure 9

Figure 10

Figure 11

Figures 9-11 show the first final covers. The last cover in figure 11 is the most dramatic because of the high contract between dark and light. The main focus of the cover is based on the crown. In the group critiques it was suggested to change the back cover image, remove the image on the spine, make the text stand out more as it is hard to read on the front cover.

Figure 12

Colours were reconsidered. The contrast between the background and crown is still desired for the overall feel of the book, dark and cold. The crown is meant to signify power, control, ice and the mirror that features at the start of the book. To get this feeling across the images were altered further, as well as cropping the face so the crown took up more of the front page.

Image from the photoshoot of the ice crowns was used on the back cover to (see photoshoot post for more images)

Figure 13

Went back to using white text on all of the book as the background was changed to black. At first it was black because it was easier to work with and then the idea was to change it to the blue but after all the alterations the dramatic, dark nature of the original story fitted with this styling.

Figures 13 and 12 show the differences in the covers. Biggest changes are with the two crown images, points were transformed in Photoshop cs3 to make them more pointy and sharp looking to give the appearance of "do not touch" the publisher was changed to Bloomsbury instead of Walker books because of two reasons;

1. Walker books is based on children's books and the audience for this cover was not intended for children as the stories would be close to original as possible. Aimed for young adults or as a collectors item.

2. When on the London trip with college we got to visit Bloomsbury and so I was more familiar with this publisher than many others out there.

Above are the two GIFs made for this book cover. Second GIF has SFM DESIGNS included so I could add it to my Facebook page SFM Designs. The final GIF is actually the first above.

Alterations to be made would include;

Have more snow, have it float down more like a leaf (side to side more)

Have the text fall in a jumble and at the crown have 'coming soon' clearly stand out from the crown by using a different colour.

Maybe apply a glow of another colour to the snowflakes to make them stand out on the crown more as they get lost more.

Make the snowflake changes more smooth, they jolt a bit but this is because I was trying to stick to my deadline for the work and I was unfamiliar with the GIF process and layering using Photoshop.

Issues I had:

• Ran out of time.
• Poor time management.
• At the end of this brief I was more invested in this and trying to perfect the GIF as it was similar to a stop motion and trying to make everything move smoothly, however I had to stop and move onto my next project.
• Struggled to choose appropriate text-ideally I want to make my own however time constraints made me reluctant to try and digitally produce them as I was also unfamiliar with the software (such as adobe illustrator)

End Thoughts:

• I feel like the London college trip is what has made me a week behind the schedules although I realise that I need to work on improving my time management skills; specifically recognise when and where is best for me to work and how to motivate myself to get the job done.
• Enjoyed making the GIF. Would like to make another using Photoshop as I feel more confident using it now.