A cover to be designed typographically with no image, can sometimes pose a challenge. On this, they specifically wanted the colours to be black, red and white, using the following logo as a basis for the design.
Not the most inspirational design in the world, but Mondrian initially came to mind, and then as I worked on it, it became more Bauhaus / Jan Tschichold inspired, mainly because of the colours I think. I’ve always been a fan of Avant-Garde graphics from the 1920’s and 30’s, so it’s probably no surprise that when asked to design something in a blocky, typographic way in this colour range, it ends up going down this route.
It’s a simple design, but so unlike most of the covers I usually work on, it’s really nice to have the opportunity to do something more graphic and stylised. Phenomenological – new favourite word.
A couple of new textbook designs next. Above left shows the authors suggestion for a new astronomy title (us book designers see a lot of photoshop savvy authors who want to design their own covers, this being one of the better and less bizarre ones) and on the right my final approved design. A bit of photoshop work was needed to combine the two images and create an outer glow around the planet, and I get to add a photoshop lens flare effect, a tool I don’t get to play with often.
And finally another bioinformatics book. Nature combined with technical computer stuff. Here’s how we arrived at this …
The first 9 covers were initially submitted. The design middle row, left, was selected for revision, and the bottom 3 were the revised options, of which the bottom right cover was approved. Not all textbook covers get through as easily as this, but then the image selection and brief were more concise. Nice job!
Zoe Naylor design & illustration 