The end of the school year is coming and as such finals are here! With my Portfolio Show approaching rapidly, assignments are due, and I am in ‘crunch mode.’
One of my final assignments was to create something original, something that I could choose to do, so long as it challenged me and represented my design abilities.
After much deliberation, I decided to go with redesigning book covers. It was tricky to decide what books specifically to redesign. I tend to love the books that nobody’s heard of, the music that no one listens to. So, I knew I needed to pick specific books that most people had heard of. My first thought was Harry Potter. Literally, everyone has read those books. Ha! Everyone but me. That was an obvious no. The Chronicles of Narnia was my next choice and they have always been a favorite of mine. However, there are seven books and only about five weeks to get them done, which may sound like a lot of time but I had six other classes with multiple projects at once.
I can be a bit too ambitious with my projects and the time frame I think they’ll take to make. So, I thought that would be too much and I wouldn’t get it done on time.
So, my next thought, and the one I was originally going to go with was the Lord of the Rings. Everyone has got to at least heard of these classics, if not read/seen them. But I had ideas for the Chronicles of Narnia and decided to go with that.
We’re gonna be ambitious for the big project!
The first step I did was to sketch out ideas. I knew the general idea of what I wanted for each book cover and while I like to have a detailed sketch to follow along when I jump into the software, I decided to wing it for this project.
(A month before graduation. Great idea).
I had to decide if I wanted to paint the covers on an actual canvas, portraying my creative abilities outside the software, or build it in Illustrator.
I went with Illustrator, because it then would portray my skills in that program, and then designed the title, author’s name, etc. in InDesign to show how I use that program.
My design idea for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, was pretty straightforward. The lantern would be in the middle of the cover with Lucy discovering Narnia for the first time.
I found photos on Pinterest to use as references when it came to drawing people. With two years under my belt in Illustrator, I wasn’t near ready to create a person in that program yet.
After some tweaking and quite a bit of adjustment, I called it good and threw it into InDesign. The layout of the title, and author’s name and everything else on it was pretty fun! I made sure the type was legible, even if it overlapped on some of the graphics, and that everything was placed most effectively without using boring type.
I used the synopsis and ‘about the author’ from my own copy of the book and called it finished.
Stay tuned to see the rest of the series!