Background Illustrations and Changes - 24.11.22
For the background, I wanted to photograph people's gardens on film. Film because for me it has a certain quality to it that I felt would represent a soft serious ambience with the black and white, whilst mixing in the child-like lettering. I felt like this would represent someone looking into their garden and peering into them as if they are curious as to what happened to the dog on the back of the cover. The person picking up the book would only notice the dog after picking up the book and flipping the book around to look at the blurb. The photos shown are the developed and scanned ones that I wanted to use.
Having this background with bits of the cover coloured really makes the cover stand out as the colour pops from the background, especially when you have highlights of red and orange on the cover. I had to also darken the background a bit so that the lettering can be seen on the cover easily. Taking photos at night whilst looking into people's gardens might look suspicious and would look creepy, so I decided to not do that.
The first and second cover from the second slideshow feels like is a good balance of the background photo, with the typography on top of it. It clearly feels like someone is peering into someone's garden whilst still being clear that it is a photograph. The illustration might also need some adjusting as well to make sure that it fits the cover. The wrap-around design is a good idea as you can tell it is a whole photo, but only bits of it will be seen on the front cover, spine and back cover.
The first background and layout are something that I feel like using, as the composition of the picture is good to represent someone peering into the garden, whilst still being a photo.
I had to zoom in a little as the word "incident" was hard to see on top of the window in the photo.
I had tried to explain this to my fiance (who is the type of person that would buy a book from the bookshelf because it looks nice and of course to read) to see if she would notice how legible things were on top of the window part of the image and she said that she did not notice how illegible it was. I decided to just try it out and adjust the image to what I felt like would be more suitable.
In some of the photos that I took, it was hard to see the lettering as some of the letters were on the white bits of the photo, making it hard to read.
I then decided to change the brightness of the photo to experiment with how it would make the lettering on the front of the cover legible. I then asked my fiance again to see which one would be better to go for in terms of brightness, as she would be one of the target audiences that I am aiming for.
The brightness and contrast were changed in the 3 photos to something that I liked and to what made the lettering legible. I then handed these concepts to my fiance.
My fiance responded with the 3rd background being too bright to see the lettering and making it less legible whilst the 1st background was too dark (she cannot see the background and what the background is). The 2nd background was the one that she liked the most, as it balanced everything well.
This shows that I had to settle for something that is in between the brightness and contrast of the 1st and 2nd background, as I felt like the word incident still is hard to see being on that background with the window.
I also explained to her why the background was chosen to be shot like this and she agreed that it was a good idea.
I also felt like the back was missing something on the left-hand side of the book (where the empty space was). I decided I should fill it up with a garden tool that is sharp enough to potentially kill a dog. I would need to find research and find out which ones look good to draw and use as an illustration on the back of the cover.
Overall, I am happy with the way that this cover balances the childlike legible handwriting, the illustration of the dog, the layout of the text on the front and the way that the colour pops out on the cover.