“This Is Love” Book Trilogy Covers
I picked three episodes from the “This Is Love” podcast and turned them into a trilogy of book covers. Starting with “The Wolves”, a story about the dynamic relationships of wolves at the Yellowstone National Park with a focus on two wolves. The challenges for these two wolves to live up to the expectations of their packs conflicting with their bond. The next episode I selected, “Something Large and Wild”, is about a teenage swimmer who encounters a baby whale. She then realizes that the baby whale is lost and helps it find it's mother, all while being astonished by this experience and the sensations she felt.
Skills
Layout, Typography, Print Design
Challenge
Design the book cover for the first episode in the trilogy, then having consistent features throughout the rest of the trilogy design to connect them. The book cover must be interesting enough to entice the viewer, but also be a representation of the key elements of the story. To achieve that, I knew I needed the covers to have a sense of mystery.
Solution
After experimenting with different ideas, I chose a cover based on its ability to portray a vital part to the story while catching the viewers attention. I used the concept of having an almost mirrored look, but it’s two similar looking scenes that demonstrate an important aspect or mood of the story for each episode. “The Wolves” portrays dusk and dawn, which are the times when the wolves are most active. The mountains symbolize the range of obstacles the main character had to overcome. “Something Large and Wild” offers the same mystery that the main character experiences when she wonders what is causing the sensations she felt while swimming. The top half is the surface and bottom is the dark depths of the ocean. In “Into The Ice”, the main character gets lost in an iceberg. She finds her way out by following these small, glowing, translucent organisms. They light her way out of the iceberg. The top and bottom split of the cover symbolizes the depths of the ocean, but also her confusion of which way is up and down.
Sketches
Roughly illustrating concepts; taking audio and written ideas, then transforming them into thumbnail sized images. This step was mainly focused on getting the ideas on paper first, then polishing enough to get them ready for experimentation with different mediums to execute the idea.
Diving head first into finding what truly works with concepts and sketches. Using different mediums for one concept to find the solution that best represents the story and is intriguing as well. I did have to change one of my concepts due to the lack of a strong visual, I can only move forward with a product that is exceptional. I ended up with new ideas that I liked more than the others visually and that could work conceptually.
Typography
Simple and clean type to not take away from the graphical component of the covers, two sans-serif typefaces.
Futura for the title because the relationship between x-height, cap-height, and ascenders seemed appropriate for the characteristics of each story. Especially the lowercase and uppercase “t” compared to an “h” ascender and the sharpness of the “W”.
Trade Gothic Next LT Pro to support with a softer and simpler form to its characters. This is good for large bodies of text and smaller supporting text, especially for legibility. Also, it has a taller x-height than Futura PT which gives a slight contrast between the two typefaces.
Color
“The Wolves” needed colors that represent dusk and dawn, and the mountainous landscape. Warm hues to represent the sun set and sun rising, black and grays for the mountain with highlights to add detail.
“Something Large and Wild” has such a deep mystery to the story that I used deep dark colors to express that feeling and the time of day (evening) with a brighter color that pans out from the center on the x axis like light would, but off centered on the y axis because the main mystery comes from below.
“Into the Ice” primarily takes place underwater in an iceberg, so I used colors that give the feeling of the different depths of water and angles of an iceberg.