Penguin Student Design Award 2019 Competition Brief - Design Development 1

To develop my design, I wanted to explore different typography options for the copy of my book cover design. The scratched typeface I had found did not fit naturally in my design at the time, and therefore I wanted to try something that felt a little more natural and personal. For this reason I had the idea of writing the copy for the book cover design by hand. In doing so, I also tried to mimic the way children and younger audiences would write. I did this in the hopes that the book cover design and the copy on it would feel more relatable and familiar to my audience. As the concept/scene for my design was a classroom desk, I decided to explore various different materials that you could find in a classroom and school setting, and to write the title for the book cover in those materials. These materials included: paint, crayons, oil pastels, marker pens, board pens, pencils, tape, ink and etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the rest of the copy for the front cover, and considering some of the copy for the back cover, I also wanted to do something hand-written. This is so not only would all the typography/text/copy feel cohesive and follow the same relatable tone for the younger audience, but also because I wanted to keep the scratched letters effect, but could not find anything that looked natural online. SO therefore I decided to create the scratched into wood letter effect myself.

After creating these type experiments, I put them into Illustrator and vectorised them using 'Image Trace' so that I could utilise them to their full potential later within my design developments.

 

 

The next step was to start experimenting with the layout of my type/text experiments, and how it could sit within my book cover design up to this point.

I decided to mix up different letters from all the different type experiments I did to form the tile of the book. I did this initially because I thought it would look quite visually interesting and unique. Moving forward I adapted this technique because the different letters and shapes represent how all children/people look different, but they all come together to create a beautiful community, in the same way how August is part of the school community and is beautiful inside, no matter what he looks like on the outside. I used my other hand-written text also, and believe that the original hand-written option looks a lot more natural and fits the scene much better than the digital typefaces.

As I knew that I will continue to use a mixture of all the type experiments, I composed a variety of 'Wonder' titles from all those experiments. I made sure that each one looked a little different and had a slightly different atmosphere to it, so that I could later try them out and see which one fits within the scene/design of my cover best.

Although I thought that the original title designs were very interesting, when applied to the design I had up till now, it seemed to get lost amongst all the objects and blur into the classroom desk pattern background. I wanted the title to stand out and be one of the focus items on the front cover, so I realised that maybe the brown class-room style background pattern may not be the best and most effective choice.

The book title is getting lost amongst the busy front cover design. There are too many elements that are all trying to portray the concept, so I knew I needed to strip some of those elements back, and that the message/concept/scene I am trying to portray would still be upheld by the other elements. 

I explored changing the background of the cover design. This was because I felt like the objects and type where the main visual clues which tell the story of the design concept and set the scene, and if I removed even some part of them this would be lost. However, the background was a bit more flexible because classrooms in the modern day do not all adhere to the same traditional wooden desk stereotypes, and so I could explore different colours and patterns with ease. Here I tried a green that is reminiscent of a teacher's chalkboard, but I soon realised that would just confuse the audience and ruin the story of the scene I was creating.

I tried a black background. Although this succeeded in making the title and all the elements of the scene stand out, however the cover now looked a little dark and sad, and  did not look exciting or fun, which means it would not catch the attention of my younger audience.

I decided to go back to the classroom desk wooden colour, however I got rid of the wood patterns. This instantly made the design look less busy and brought some attention back to the title and objects. To make the cover feel more cohesive and give it a more soft and inviting tone, I removed the black outline from all the objects. This gave the design overall a more positive and familiar tone. However, I still felt like the background was overpowering the title of the book.

With the black outlines gone from the illustrations, I quickly went back to see whether adding the wooden pattern effect on the background could visually work well now. However, still the background was overpowering the main elements within the book cover design. I knew that I needed to try a drastic change to the design to be able to move forward.

The last variation of this design I tried, which partly triggered the drastic change in direction that I took afterwards, included getting rid of the background colour all together. Now all the elements within the design were standing out just as I had wanted them too, even with the wooden pattern elements that I had kept in the background. The wooden patterns against the solid white, however, looked a little silly because wood is not typically white. Nonetheless, I felt like this design was a step in the right direction because a simple white background was proving to be the most effective in bringing out the bright and bold colours within the title and object illustrations. 

From here onwards, I decided to make a more drastic change in my design process  because this one was proving to be not as successful as I had hoped. Moving forward I went to explore the same classroom desk concept, but in a more abstract, subtle and visually engaging way. From the designs above I took forward the typography/text/copy designs I had done and the objects illustrations. I also took on board what I had discovered about using a white background, how it was the most effective in making these elements stand out.