Graphic Design/ Book Design
Strange Angels — The Brief
Rework an existing book cover into something to draw in readers, potentially expand the reader base, and create a design that will spike readers curiosity about the story being told in the novel.
The Inspiration
When given the brief to redesign a book cover I thought back to one of my favorite book series as a teen— Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow. Fourteen-year-old me stumbled onto the book in the library and thought it seemed really cool, and I ended up following the series throughout my teens as the books were released. I loved them, and even got my sister hooked on them. In this rework wanted to capture the gritty story about a teen girl trying to survive.
This book is a paranormal fantasy, and I wanted to pull from the content within the story. I had several ideas, however, one scene always stood out to me. In the scene, our teenaged heroine, Dru, has been waiting for her dad to come home from a monster hunt for a few days when she hears tapping at the back door. She goes to investigate the sound and finds her dead father standing there, having been murdered and turned into a zombie. I decided to take this imagery— Dru standing in the kitchen, looking at her dead father, and capture this for the cover. It is where everything in the story truly begins, and tells a story in and of itself.
The original book cover.
Goals
Create a book cover that invokes a reader’s curiosity and draws them in. The book cover should be relevant to the story, have enough mystery to draw readers in, but not be so simple as to be boring.
Establish a clear hierarchy, with defined focal points, planned white space, and clear readability. A reader should not feel overwhelmed with information on a cover, and should be able to take in all information at a glance.
Planning for screen and print. As satisfying as physical books can be, audiobooks and e-readers are rising in popularity. Making the formatting friendly for print and screens is crucial for modern-day readers of all ages.
Ideation
I began this process by looking at the original book cover, as well as creating mood boards, word maps, and sketches. I wanted to identify themes and imagery throughout the novel to draw on.
Digital Drafts
Moving on from sketches I began to flesh out my ideas in vector. While these are definitely rough, with some questionable color choices, I was able to get more of my ideas onto the screen and better see what was working and which ideas to pitch and burn.
With some further refinements and completely throwing away one idea, I was able to get some fairly fleshed-out covers, but and was further able to explore layout options and see where I could push my ideas even more.
The Final Solution
While there are many beautiful vector book covers, for my purposes they were way too flat. I considered keeping them as vector art and doing fun things with the printing, such as embossing the cracked lines, but I decided that using photography would be a better way to add the depth and grittiness the past ideations were missing.
Reflection
This is a project that I did a lot of finagling with to make work. Oftentimes while creating something there comes a point of “is this idea working, or should I explore other routes?” This project was one giant question of that, all the way up until the final iteration. Yet, when wrestling with a design, and the final outcome is amazing, the sense of accomplishment is like no other.