For this exercise, I was asked to design three book covers for any of H.G. Wells’s novels. I could pick any three books to design for, bearing in mind that they would be sold together as a set. The designs were expected to ‘establish the books as timeless fiction’ and needed to work together. I had to include the title, author’s name, and publishing information, and design the spine of each too.
I began by dissecting the brief using the ‘who/what/where/when/why’ approach from Exercise 2, as well as identifying keywords. I then wrote out a plan for approaching the exercise.
My first task was to identify which books I was going to be designing for. I have some awareness of H.G. Wells’s work, as I’m very interested in dystopian and early science fiction, however, I have not actually read any of them. My goal was to pick three books that worked as a set and made sense to sell together. I also wanted to pick ones that were popular so that there was enough information out there for me to research the plot of each book without having to actually read all three. I began by googling the author and writing down the most popular of his novels, alongside the genre google classified each by. I then considered how I could mix and match his most popular novels to create a ‘timeless’ set.
Three of the books – The War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The First Men in the Moon, had ‘sci-fi/romance’ as their genre listed on google. I felt torn between matching these together as they had the same genre and picking Wells’s most known novels. I decided to look further into the plot of these three books, checking to see just how ‘romantic’ they are. My research led me to the term ‘scientific romance’, which it turns out does not actually mean ‘a science fiction novel that has romance themes within’, but ‘a romancing of the sciences’ – and it’s an outdated term replaced by the now widely known ‘sci-fi’.
Upon learning this, I realised it made a lot more sense to choose Wells’s most popular work, especially as this would fit the ‘timeless’ requirement very well. A quick look at some of the existing H.G. Wells collections out there showed me that ‘The War of the Worlds’ and ‘The Time Machine’ are very often sold together. These books both explore new concepts for the first time – surviving an alien invasion and time travel. Picking the third novel to go alongside them was tricky, but I felt that ‘The First Men in the Moon’ fit very well – as it was the first novel that explored the idea of space travel. I decided to proceed with researching and designing for these three books.
I wanted to make sure I had a good understanding of the plot of each book before I began designing covers for them. I’ve seen so many stories of designers not doing this and just designing based on the title alone, or the ‘vibes’ the book gives off, and the cover having nothing to do with the actual content of the book. I started by looking for plot summary videos on youtube, and managed to find one for both The War of the Worlds, and The Time Machine, but not for The First Men in the Moon. I took notes from these videos, and then started to look elsewhere for written plot summaries. I used these Britannica articles (1, 2), and the Wikipedia article for The First Men in the Moon, and took some more notes on the themes and major plot points.
My next step was to research book covers. I decided to start by researching existing book covers for my chosen books to get an idea of the kind of content, colour palettes, and font choices that are popular for them. I then broadened my research to include all science fiction novels and looked into some existing sets of books to explore how other designers had worked to create collections that fit well together. I created a Pinterest board to house all of my research, which you can see below.
Looking through the various existing book covers got me thinking about the concept of ‘timeless’ and ‘contemporary’ and how I could express this through my designs. It felt hard to imagine how something could be both relevant to modern times, whilst maintaining this relevance for decades to come. I looked up the definitions of the two words in the hope it would give me some direction. Timeless is defined as ‘not affected by the passage of time or changes in fashion’. Contemporary is defined as ‘following modern ideas in style or design’. I figured it would be a good idea, then, to research what the modern ideas in style and design are – and what design elements are never changing consistencies.
I began by reading this article on timeless design. The focus of the article is on UX design, which isn’t totally relevant to this project. It still gave me a good representation of the kind of concepts considered ‘timeless’ in the industry. ‘Simplicity’ especially was a word repeated throughout. Something simple, easy to look at, easy to use – that was guaranteed to stand the test of time. The article made me consider whether timeless design was a specific style to adhere to, or whether it was simply about making something that would look iconic still in 20 years. The second article I read once again mentioned simplicity as one of its 5 timeless design features – but it also brought up Swiss design. With its bold sans-serif fonts, crisp outlines, and strong geometric elements, Swiss design screams timeless, easy, minimalistic – simple.
Luckily for me – contemporary graphic design is very focused on these same ideals. Minimalism is all the rage right now, much to the horror of some UX designers (what happened to the firefox fox?), and has been for about a decade. Recent years have shown some pushback and a desire to bring the colours, patterns, textures, and experimental design from the alternative scenes of the 60s, 70s, and 80s into the modern day – however, minimalism seems to be prevailing even there. Sans-serif fonts are featured with smooth, bold geometric designs, it’s just this time they’re neon pink.
It was pretty clear that, for my work to be stunning, contemporary, and established as timeless, I would need it to be simple. I had some ideas bouncing around in my mind at this point, but I had one more research point to tackle: which publisher will be publishing these books? It was a requirement to have the publisher’s name and trademark on the book, and I’m somewhat aware that different publishing companies have different expectations stylistically. The books I was most drawn to when researching were Penguin books, and as the aim is to be timeless, that felt like the perfect choice.
I spent some time looking on the Penguin website at their book covers specifically – especially their collections – and trying to get some inspiration. I was particularly drawn to the ‘Green Ideas’ collection – the simple designs, gorgeous colour choices, and how the books matched and flowed together – it’s truly a stunning piece of work. I had so many ideas at this point and I really wanted to get them down on paper. I began by exploring the most simple concept I could think of, and then a more ‘radical’ approach. I felt very excited by the radical approach, so developed it further.
I wanted to reference specific extracts from each of the books to build up the imagery and ensure they were connected to the content. For The War of the Worlds, I took the sentence ‘[a] monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine-trees, and smashing them aside in its career.’ and tried to visualise this, referencing existing media depicting this ‘tripod’ creature.
For The Time Machine, I referenced two extracts: ‘Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock crystal. The thing was generally complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it. Quartz it seemed to be.’ and ‘I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer green flow up the hillside, and remain there, without any wintry intermission. […] As the columns of hail grew thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It was very large, for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It was of white marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of bronze, and was thick with verdigris‘. These descriptions of the future and of the time machine itself were useful to draw from.
The First Men in the Moon is a tougher book to find extracts from, so I based my concept on this sentence found in the Wikipedia plot summary: Cavor hits upon the idea of a spherical spaceship made of “steel, lined with glass”, and with sliding “windows or blinds” made of cavorite by which it can be steered, and persuades a reluctant Bedford to undertake a voyage to the Moon.
According to the Penguin Collectors Society, Penguin paperback books are 129mm x 198mm. I opened up a procreate canvas in this size and began exploring colour and texture options. I wanted to work with a simple two-tone colour scheme for each book, similar to the Green Ideas covers, with one consistent colour across all three. I played around with some different colour schemes – variations between pastel tones and richer colours, and tried out various shades of cream to complement them. I was able to choose the shade of cream easily and narrowed down my colour choices to two palettes. I then sent them to a friend for some feedback, asking which was more ‘timeless yet contemporary’. They said the bold colours worked best, and I agreed they have a ‘vintage vibe’ to them.
Next, I selected a Bardot Brush Magic Paper texture overlay for the piece. I wanted the texture to evoke a ‘freshly printed in the 1920s’ feeling, like the woven covers of hardback books from that time period. I felt the overlay called ‘linen’ did this job spectacularly and made my colours pop beautifully too. Next, I experimented with different brushes. Sticking with the ‘right out the 1920s’ vibe, I wanted my illustrations to look almost as if they were woodcut prints. I ended up choosing three brushes that felt they could make this vision come to life, however, I would need to see them on the final illustration to make a decision on which to use.
My final big piece of research for this project was to explore and decide on a font to use. This process took a while, and I had a lot of fun trying to emulate Penguin’s classic style. I began by researching what exactly that is, starting of course with Jan Tschichold, who revolutionised Penguin’s book covers in 1947. Penguin Composition Rules was the name he gave the guidelines he wrote for Penguin typography and design, which specified everything from the shade of orange used on penguin books still today, down to the kerning of the font used inside the book itself. These guidelines are considered Tschichold’s legacy in many ways, and he is often referred to as one of the most influential graphic designers in history.
Tschichold’s fonts of choice for Penguin included Gill Sans, Monotype Bembo, Monotype Centaur, and Gill’s Perpetua. The latter of the three are serif fonts, which I felt went against the ‘simplicity’ message I had internalised when researching how I would approach this exercise. So I began to look elsewhere for font ideas, as I wanted to ensure I explored all the options out there. I ended up finding Fonts In Use, a website that self-describes as ‘an independent archive of typography’. Their page on Penguin books was immensely useful to scroll through and gave me two more fonts to play with: Futura and Fugue.
I downloaded all three fonts and went back to my procreate file to begin exploring how I could use them. I also downloaded the official Penguin logo from the D&AD Young Blood Awards brief assets, to ensure I could use it in my design. I wanted to capture the ‘Penguin Classics’ font perfectly, and feel I did a good job of it. Identifying the title font was a little harder, and I explored several different options, before deciding it would be better to come back at the end of the process and re-evaluate.
Finally, I felt able to begin illustrating the first book cover. I began by sketching it out, then I filled in the shapes with block colour. Ever since doing Exercise 11 in Key Steps in Illustration, I have been enamoured by the ‘graphic illustration’ style and using negative space to show detail. I wanted to use this same approach here, as it felt like it fit the brief well. I began to carve out my negative space and add in the detail by erasing the colour that was there. I then edited the logo slightly to include it in the colour scheme for the book. Once the illustration felt complete, I began trying out my different texture brushes as overlays to see which I felt fit best. I ended up choosing the Bardot Brush ‘Dry Grainy’ brush.
Before moving on to editing the text, I wanted to make sure my colour choices were correct. I experimented with inverting the colours so that the illustration was cream on a red background, and I sent a copy of each option to the Visual Communications Discord server. The response was overwhelmingly clear – the red background looked better. I agreed, so kept it in place, and moved on to fixing my font and making the logo stand out better.
I felt extremely happy with how this cover had turned out – it was exactly as I envisioned and I couldn’t believe it. It’s not often that happens! I attended a Visual Communications Crit session hosted by Emma Powell a few days after completing the first book cover, and I decided to present my work at the stage I was at and ask for feedback. I had mocked up the other two covers with a bit more detail and some rough linework to show the concept better. It was a really useful session and got me thinking about how I could alter the other two designs.
How I was using negative space and exploring size differences was discussed – and how I could make it more obvious that there was a person in the illustration for the The Time Machine cover – were especially hot topics. I felt the The Time Machine cover wasn’t quite as eye-catching, and the The First Men in the Moon cover felt pretty lacklustre. The attendants of the session did not agree, but I was advised to change the illustration somewhat so that the author’s name would be fully within the Moon. I hadn’t considered this, so it was good to have a 2nd pair of eyes on my work for this reason especially!
After the crit session, I was looking forward to continuing with the illustrations and seeing how the final pieces looked. My favourite thing about designing sets or collections of products is that once you have the first one done – you’ve figured out the majority of the problems that need to be explored. The rest are easier going, and a lot of cut-and-paste is used. I knew everything already for the second illustration except how it would look. I spent a long time going back and forth on this and trying out a lot of different patterns, shapes, and techniques, in an attempt to get the cover to stand out more. After a while, I just accepted that this is what it looks like and without starting from scratch, I was going to have a hard time making it any better.
I felt pretty disappointed in the second cover, and as I already felt the third cover was lacklustre, I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I knew I needed to get this exercise finished though, as I had spent a long time on it already. I followed the same process as for the previous two covers and tried not to think too much about how I didn’t like what I was producing. The main difference for this cover is that I intentionally did the brushstrokes for the woodcut effect in the same direction to try to emulate movement through space. I’m not sure that now, looking at the three covers together, this was a good idea, as it sticks out a bit.
I feel that how proud I was of my first cover and how excited I was with how I had achieved my goal set me up for greater disappointment when I felt my second two covers did not quite live up to that standard. I don’t think they’re bad covers, they’re just not as strong as the first one. I feel frustrated about that.
I briefly touched on what I wanted to do for the spine back when sketching out my initial ideas. The spine would be simple, carrying over design features from the front cover. This was pretty easy to carry out, I just copied and rearranged the different elements. I then found some book mock-up files to add my designs to, hoping that seeing them laid out like this would make me feel a bit better about the overall final designs.
This exercise was so much fun. It’s been a while since I had a proper design brief to sink my teeth into and I got a lot out of it. It felt like sharpening a pencil that hasn’t been used in a while – but that falls into my hand so comfortably. I think I can be too hard on myself sometimes and I definitely hold myself to way too high of a standard. The mock-ups look great, and I’m really proud of the work I did here. I thought I would find this exercise pretty boring, as book design isn’t really an area that interests me. I felt like I learned a lot – especially about fonts!
Learning Log 