Book Cover: The Final

 OK, this project was a pain in the neck. Literally. After who knows how many hours on the computer, I've finally created my masterpiece!! So, maybe not really a masterpiece, but pretty cool in any case.

I'm so happy with how it turned out!! I overlaid textures onto all the buildings individually, and added the text onto the Ministry pyramids.  As for the back, I got some quotes off of Amazon (thank you by the way!) and used the pyramid shapes as paragraph spacers and to create implied line on the spine.  I looked up the original publisher, and created a quick logo for them because I felt like it.

Honestly, my favorite part of the cover is probably the back, especially those 4 pyramids at the bottom that look kind of creepy.  Kinda random, but it's still my favorite part!  I created the barcode in Photoshop, and in retrospect, I probably should have made it smaller, but oh well.

Here's a closer look at the cover.

And here's the cover upside down, because  I know you're curious :)

It was a screenshot at an earlier stage, which is why it my look a little bit different, especially the texture of the dystopic Ministries...

















Feel free to comment with question or observations!

Book Covers: Initialize - digitalization!

Alright, so I wasn't sure how well my sketch would translate into the computer, but as I got started, to more confident I felt.

Here is the product of 3 hours in the computer lab on my first attempt.  I thought it looked rather promising :) I don't really know what I was thinking with the strange gradient on the title bar, I suppose I just wanted to jazz it up a bit.

This is the front cover with both "sides" done. There are no effects, and I really love how it looks. Unfortunately, this could have been done (and probably done better) in Illustrator, and it didn't really meet the requirements of the assignment. I'll probably keep it in my portfolio, but I still had a long way to go before I got my final product.  If I had been able to keep this as my final, I probably would have made the title bar a lighter beige, and included the author...

Book covers!!

So, um, I absolutely love books and I was really excited to get started on this project.  The hardest part of getting started was choosing what book to do! I've read a lot of books, and seen a lot of book covers in my time, but I decided to do 1984 by George Orwell.  It's one of my favorite dystopian society novels, and I wanted to make a kick-butt cover for it!

 I sketched out a couple of ideas, and was getting all set to do the one with the fence-type shape in the foreground (bottom left of this first page), but later I decided it was kind of static and well, boring.

To remedy that, I played around with a few different ideas.  A dystopic city behind that idyllic white picket fence, or even a dilapidated (such a great word) house.  The fence posts were supposed to be the 4 ministries, with their names, and then their actual functions.  If you've never read this book - go do it! Right now! For real though, read it, it's pretty amazing.

I still wasn't sold on this whole fence thing, but none of my other ideas were any good, but then one day inspiration struck!  I needed something more dynamic, and what's more dynamic than triangles? Nothing, that's what. So this idea was born.  The illusion of the bright, shining, utopia juxtaposed (another awesome word) with the dark, gloomy, and slightly creepy dystopia that is the reality, but is supposedly hidden.

And here's a close up of the colored one, because you look kinda silly with your head turned sideways like that. :)

Pictograms: The Grand Finale!

I am happy to report that I solved all my remaining problems before turning this in!  The stroke weight problem was resolved with a little visit to the Preferences panel, and the GPS coloring became much better with a little more playing around when I got bored with that blah dark green background I had before.  What do you think? Pretty snazzy huh?

*although in retrospect, I think I should have made the GPS arrow black in the small version...

Pictograms: Tweaking and Sqeaking

Next up: Color tweaking and making sure the weight is balanced.

I decided that the map was fine the way it was, so this only applies to the globe and the GPS.

The globe was the easy one of the two.  During our critique, it came to my attention that in the black and white version, all the weight was on the bottom, and the actual globe part was lost when viewed from far away. So, I made the land masses black. Problem solved.  I didn't translate that into the little ones, which were having their own issues because the stroke weight was becoming distorted the smaller it became.

So, this blasted GPS (technology is wonderful) was my next project to tackle.  The color scheme was all wrong, and as I mentioned earlier didn't mesh with the other two. So I spent an entire evening in the computer lab solely devoted to resolving this little snag.  I tried many different color combinations, until I found one that wasn't completely awful. Voila! I knew it still wasn't right, but there wasn't anything to be done about it at that point.

Pictograms: To the computer!!

My next step was to translate my ideas into Adobe Illustrator.  

First up is the globe.  This one was actually quite fun to try and put together.  I free-handed the map of the world (and yes, it's hard to have that much talent) and chose a color scheme.  The color version came first, and then I translated it into black and white. 

Next up: the paper map.  I wanted to make it have a old, worn look, but I think I could've gone farther with the ripped edges and adding creases and such.  As it is, I still like it, even though it looks too pristine to have been in the hands of explorers and ye olde crusty pirates.

*I have no idea why the rest of the sea monster didn't show up in the color one....

Lastly: the GPS.  Now, I haven't had a lot of experiences with these newfangled gadgets, but I do know what one looks like, and its presence catapulted my pictograms into the modern age.  I wanted to make it a combination of the map and the globe, because it is flat, and rectangular-ish like the map, but still has a sheen on it, like the globe.  However, I wanted the colors to be bright and vibrant, but that didn't really do much to unify it with the other two.

PIctograms: Conceptual stages

     

Alright, so for our first project we designed pictograms.  At first I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, so I sketched out a bunch of different ideas. (Top image)  I finally decided to go with the "navigation through history" idea represented by a globe, an old-style map, and a GPS. (Bottom image)