Layout Changes and Ideas - 17.11.22
This is when I would experiment with the different layout ideas that I have. In a previous blog post, I mentioned trying all the techniques that I am comfortable with using such as photograph and illustrator and merging all of that work towards something that I am happy with.
These are the steps that I did when trying this out. I also changed my idea to just have a photograph as a background, as creating a background in illustrator would take some time and it would mean that I need to focus more on one of my skills, which I do not mind doing but can take away from showing what I can do as a graphic designer.
For the first layout design, I tried experimenting with the background style that I wanted, which was using black and white film (I do like taking a lot of photos on film). This would also give a mysterious style that I want as well. I also had to invert the lettering, as black on a mostly black background would not make anything legible. A classmate of mine told me that I should experiment with making the word "incident" red as this would give a sense of danger with why it was an incident and would also symbolise it as blood. I changed this in one of the slideshow photos to see if it would work, which (to both of our agreements) worked really well, especially when it was on a black-and-white background due to the contrasting colours (or lack of colour in the background).
I then changed the layout more, adding the titles for the awards and started thinking about the spine of the book as well. When experimenting with the title on the spine, I decided to use the same custom font as the front on the spine to see if this would work. I decided that it would be better to use this custom font, as you can clearly see after more layout changes were made. This was because I felt like it would add character to the spine of the book, rather than having a sans serif font as this would make it look too formal.
I asked my classmate if the cover looks good and what it portrays and if there is anything else that I can change as quick feedback during the time in class, as he was also the one that suggested that I should try the red lettering. He said that it gives this sort of mysterious look to the cover, which I was going for and that I should focus on adding anything that is relevant to a book cover.
The background will also be changed to something that resembles a back garden or a park (as dogs would usually be around there). The background was just a placeholder for now as I have a film canister to develop and get some back garden shots that I took. I wanted to make it so that it would look like someone's peering into someone's garden to notice what happened to the dog. The author's name was just transferred over from the front to the spine as I felt like the lettering weight and style worked for both the front cover and the spine. This would also have cohesion too.
Some more layout changes and additions of the penguin logo, blurb, barcode and price of the book and I felt like the layout for the cover is nearly done. Just need to make sure that the background of the cover works.
The penguin logo was chosen to be orange as this would stand out alongside the hints of colour that I intend to use to contrast between the background and anything else on the title.
The blurb was copied and pasted from the Waterstones' website. This might not be a good idea as a designer as I cannot just use the Waterstones' blurb as this can be classed under copyright material.