Posts Tagged ‘Book design’

I strolled through the library last week looking for possible, “coffee table”-worthy books that were in need of a redesign. Since my aim for my book design class is to have three, portfolio-ready pieces, I think the coffee table test is a good indicator of what can be achieved. I checked out  three books from the library, but as I started scanning them in, I eliminated one from the project possibilities. The first book that made the cut (or failed my own, arbitrary design litmus test, as it were), was Melcher Media’s Sex and the City: The Movie photo book.

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It’s been a long time coming, but I finally have a moment to post images of the finished layout of The Elephant’s Child, Book Design’s first project. Once I’ve gotten the fully assembled book back, I’ll post a picture of that as well. But for now, JPEGs extracted from the PDF file will have to do. Let me know what you think.

Back Cover, Spine and Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright and Dedication

Half Title Page

Chapter One Heading

Chapter Two Heading	Chapter Three Heading
Chapter Four Heading	Chapter Five Heading

First Page of Chapter

Text Treatment

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This summer, I’ve enrolled in the book design class at the University of Baltimore. Since UB’s summer session is a short eight weeks, the class instruction (and time to complete a project) is a whirlwind. The first project is to design a book for the Rudyard Kipling short story, “The Elephant’s Child”. After several revisions, I feel I’m close to being happy with my cover design.

Since I am not an illustrator by any stretch of the imagination, obtaining art for a project is always a challenge for me. Especially when there is no client to bill for the work. I found some exceptional paintings from artist Aria Eden which I used to create a rough mock-up to present to class. After attempting the first cover, I was told that artwork created for the story itself could not be used-even unpublished artwork. D’oh!

The Elephant's Child Book Cover Concept (Version 1)

Scouring the Web, I found a beautiful sketch of an elephant’s face. The artist added pink watercolor to the sketch to soften the pencil lines. The use of pink gave me a unique color palette to work from to create the back cover of the book. Sadly, a week after first presenting the cover, a comment was made that the illustration looked like a body part that rhymes with “heinous”. Needless to say, this was a bad thing.

The Elephant's Child Book Cover Concept (Version 2)

Back to the drawing board, I found myself scrambling. Until I found Khawan Barton‘s fantastic sketches on Flickr. Khawan’s elegant sketches of elephants gave me the opportunity to use a more wistful font choice for the title of the book. The only comment in class was that the artwork needed a little more “meat” behind it. I am guessing this means a little more substance to help support it. The result is below. I’m fairly happy with it, though now I’m not sure about the color of the title in version 4.

The Elephant's Child Book Cover Concept (Version 3)

The Elephant's Child Book Cover Concept (Version 4)

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