Book Cover Beginnings

Shortly after choosing the book series redesign project and choosing the set of books labeled drugs, I immediately began to think of using a distressed typeface.  To explore this idea I found a distressed font in my library called Hand Cancelled by Hoefler Type Foundary.  Although I like this typeface it has a live traced look.  I plan on making my own distressed type via photocopying, unless for some reason I decide not to go with the distressed look, too cliche perhaps?  Naw, I like the distressed look and it seems fitting to the subject matter.  So Below are some mock ups. I wanted to explore using distressed type and some textural imagery.  The imagery is strong but I am going to work on it some more and see where it goes.  I aim to focus more on the type in order to make the type stronger/more dominant.  I had fun making these and am liking where this project is headed so far.  As of now I am making the covers 9.5  x 6.25 in.  So this is where I'm at, so far. I gotta start thinking about the spine and back too.

 

Book Cover Series Research

I have decided to go with the book cover series instead of the dinner invitation. I am going to redesign the the drugs set which consists of: Junky by William S. Burroughs, Confessions of An English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey, and The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac. None of which I have read.  I am somewhat familiar with Burroughs and Kerouac though.  I am going to scope the libraries for these books asap so I can began to read some of them while I work on the designs.  For now I have been reading about the authors and these titles online and have started looking at preexisting designs for these books.  Below are a few things I found.   In addition I cam across a couple loaded links.  This one has a ton of William Burroughs book covers on it!  Thirty or so covers for Junky, even ones in different languages, which is awesome. And I came across this Jack Kerouac book cover flickr group which has loads of cover posted.  That is where I found the two series posted below, the three books series and the four book series with the black and white photos.  It was cool to see some examples of series designed for these books, to see how the designer handled it.  Also I this link has a ton of covers for Kerouac's On the Road, in all different languages too, which was fun to look at.   

Projects 2 & 3 Initial Ideas

For the next two projects I'm going to go with the dinner party invitation and the dada poem projects. I'm still somewhat torn about doing the book series instead of the dinner party invitation, but I will most likely go with the dinner party invitation. I am attracted to the dada poem project because the process is intriguing and dadaism is awesome, I always enjoyed studying dada in my art history classes. The works of John Heartfield, Marcel Duchamp, Many Ray, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Hannah Hoch, etc. were intriguing to me. The whole notion of dada is awesome, even that it still remains ambiguous in a way. I like the fact that it challenges not only culture but art itself. Anyway, another reason I like this project is the fact that it focuses on motion, and that we will be looking at a lot of example of type in motion as this is something I want to experiment with and learn more about. I really want to get adobe after effects and start learning it.
For the dinner party invitation I think it would be fun to do something that is satirical. Like a 2012 dine till the end of time theme. With an aztec stylistic treatment maybe. But the more I think about the dinner invitation, the more I want to do the book designs. The book project might give me the opportunity to explore some books I haven't read and make visual design's based off my interpretation of them. I like the literary aspect of the book project but also it would be a nice piece for my portfolio, I have done some book jacket design but none I'm super stoked on, so this would give me a chance to really make something cool. So I'm definitely going to do the dada project and am still deciding between the books and the invitation, probably the books, so I'm going to review the book assignment specs and sleep on it for now.