Penguin Awards - Book Cover Sketchbook
by Johan Lindqvist
The Brief The object of the Penguin Book cover competition is to come up with an original book cover design for an old classic book. This years brief for the puffin award was as follows: “S.E. Hinton was only seventeen when she wrote The Outsiders. Told in a direct, first-person voice, it is a miracle of honesty with immediate appeal and is still every bit as powerful now as when it was first published in 1967. Students are invited to design a whole new cover look for The Outsiders, in order to bring this classic to a new generation of readers, ensuring that this timeless story remains an integral part of every teenager’s bookshelf.”
Research and inspiration My first step was to research and find out what the book is about, how older official book covers have looked like and what perhaps fans have created before. The book itself was not available at the library so I have not read it. However I watched the movie adaption from 1983 directed by Francis Ford Coppola. I reckon it gave me sufficient insight of the story in order to come up with a relevant design. During my research I found that a lot of the old book covers focused strongly on the visuals of the characters rather than the deeper meanings of the book.
Screendump from the movie credits.
Characters, characters everywhere.
Initial ideas My first attempts to come up with ideas started with simple sketching and writing in my sketchbook. I am very inexperienced with using a sketchbook and my preferred method of coming up with ideas is writing them down with words first. And then I “sketch� in Photoshop or Illustrator. But I gave it a try.
Further inspiration I was browsning through some more modern design inspiration and found a minimalistic manner that I really liked.
Sketching in illustrator I tried out a few concepts and ideas in illustrator that I had come up with during my research and modest sketching. I feel very comfortable using adobe illustrator and it is my preferred way of “sketching�.
My final concept I realise that the characters in the book are what “makes the story� but I still felt like I wanted to highlight something different, some attribute or event that had something to do with the story and the message of the book. I felt that the moment when Ponyboy and Johnny saved the kids from the burning church was a turning moment of the story and something that almost brought the socs and greasers together. My final design is very inspired from the minimalist poster trend and I think it will catch the eyes and intrigue by passers in a bookshop.
The process
My alternative design The knife and the comb are two very obvious visual attributes representing the greaser culture expressed in the story. I feel that this idea is a little bit too weak to represent to books story properly.
Conclusions I am comfortable with “thinking design� but this was my first attempt at designing a book cover and I feel as if there is much to learn when it comes this design discipline. Designing a book cover is similar to designing a poster, it is supposed to catch the eyes of the beholder and sell whatever is advertised. However a book cover is also supposed to last a lot longer. It is three-dimensional and people will touch and hold your design, giving you many more options that I was not used to. Given my experience I am happy with my results. However I wished I had read the book. I might have gotten a different and probably more accurate impression of the story and subsequently could have created a more accurate design.
Johan Lindqivst | Graphic Design & Illustration | UWS 2013