503 Penguin 'A Brief History of Time' - Research

Existing book covers:

I looked at existing book cover designs to gain a better idea of how the book has been portrayed and communicated up to date. I noticed that a lot of the existing book covers had a quite outdated style. My book cover design, therefore, needs to be more contemporary and fresh to appeal to a new generation of readers. I also noticed that apart from one cover, most of them were quite dark. This is expected as the book is about 'space', and dark/black colours are what most people associate with it. Therefore, I knew that within my design I should consider some more interesting and unexpected colour schemes. Imagery of space is also very common, so that will be another element that I will try to avoid.

Imagery from 'A Brief History of Time':

Looking at the imagery within the book, I am able to get inspiration for imagery of the cover. By linking the cover to the content within the book, I am able to create a connection between the design and the reader. Sometimes the influence can be obvious, and other times ore abstract, however either way when this type of design is done, it makes the reader feel special when they understand a reference. By possibly having the cover design link to the content within the book, I will not only be able to intrigue new readers, but also attract the people who have already read the book and possibly make them curious to read it again.

 

The colours of space:

To aid my design decisions, I decided to research what colour space and its elements. Stereotypically, when you think you space you imagine a black sky with white stars and multi-coloured nebula. However, these photos are always heavily edited and not the true colours of space. As the book 'A Brief History of Time' is an educational and scientifically correct book, I wanted the colour schemes I use for my book cover design to reflect that and all be scientifically correct.

"Although, on average, stars are white in color, there’s a very important reason for that. Our eyes have evolved to see a very narrow set of wavelengths of light, which we know as the visible light spectrum, ranging from violet light at around 400 nanometers to red light at around 700 nanometers."

"This means that stars that burn at hotter temperatures than the Sun will appear bluer, while stars that are cooler will appear progressively yellow, orange, and even red. In the southern hemisphere, a view of the Southern Cross and pointer stars will show off this contrast"

"his great nebula, as seen up close, actually shows off the two major colors visible to human eyes found throughout dusty regions in space. On the left, the deep blue nebula sharply contrasts with the larger, red glow coming from the right.It turns out that regions of space that glow red are a little more common, but regions that glow blue are abundant as well."

"In January, the true colour of the Universe was declared as somewhere between pale turquoise and aquamarine, by Ivan Baldry and Karl Glazebrook at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore Maryland.
They determined the cosmic colour by combining light from over 200,000 galaxies within two billion light years of Earth. The data came from the Australian 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey at the Anglo-Australian Observatory in New South Wales, Australia."

"Glazebrook now says the true colour this data gives is closer to beige. “I’m very embarrassed,” he says, “I don’t like being wrong.”

The mistake was caused by a bug in the software Glazebrook had used to convert the cosmic spectrum into the colour the human eye would see if it was exposed to it. “There’s no error in the science, the error was in the perception,” says Glazebrook."

"After studying the colour of light emitted by 200,000 galaxies scientists have combined them to produce the colour, they have dubbed 'cosmic latte'.

Other names suggested for it were 'univeige' and 'skyvory'.

But apparently this colour has changed over the last six billion years as the predominant colour has shifted from blue to more of a red."

"Our real motive for calculating the cosmic spectrum was really a lot more than producing this one colour.

"The colour is interesting but in fact the cosmic spectrum is rich in detail and tells us a lot more about the history of star formation in the universe."

The findings suggested the Universe started off as a shade of blue but a generation of "red" stars evolved so that the universe will become redder and redder.

The change in colour over six billion years from pale turquoise to beige is similar to the colour of the sky at sunset.

Now it varies between a pale pink, cream and a soft turquoise colour depending on the adaptation of the eye to different amounts of light."

Sources:
 - http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/09/14/the-color-of-space/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2013-the-universe-is-not-turquoise-its-beige/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/6487622/The-universe-is-beige.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_latte
https://www.space.com/34146-fake-colors-nasa-photos-stop-complaining.html