OUGD406 - Studio Brief 01 - Final Design

The final design for this competition brief uses ideas taken from the book in terms of the characters. The spine and back cover are the main parts of this design idea in that the criminals, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock have only their eyes appearing on the spine, which was used as a point of difference in hope to make it stand out on the shelf if commercially published. It has been said that you can tell a lot about a person just from their eyes, which also highlights some of their distinctive features, such as Hickock’s slightly deformed face as a result of an automobile accident. The design uses this idea to convey mystery and force the viewer to pick up the book.

The idea was to also use elements of the story which may not be as apparent when reading the story but add extra details to it, such as the composition of the original booking photographs of Hickock and Smith. These were composed to portray them as ordinary people. The back cover shows this idea whereby they are both detached from their numbers, as their prisoner numbers can now almost be seen as another part of their split personalities.

As a result of this focus, the front cover is mostly typographic with only the tips of Hickock and Smith’s heads showing. The typeface used for the title is Bodoni Poster and the body copy uses Bodoni Book. This typeface felt suitable for the book, as it has clear links to the type style used on the original 1966 book cover for In Cold Blood which used both Pistilli and Bodoni. It’s bold weight and contrasting sharp serifs give it a personality similar to that of old newspaper headings, which is representational of the new publicity of the town of Holcomb, Kansas in local papers regarding the crime. It was decided to use this in all-caps in order to make it stand out further on the cover, being the main source of type.

The colours were kept fairly minimal to convey the overarching emotion and themes which take place in the book, which are quite grey and cold. The decision was made to not use many bold colours, as research into Truman Capote’s preferences in previous book covers was to keep the designs and colours as accurate to the story as possible, such as (if being used) darker shades of red and purple to convey the ‘old’ blood found at the crime scene, rather than bright red for ‘new’ blood.

The imagery was taken from the original booking form photographs of Hickock and Smith when they were arrested. These photographs would likely belong to the government or some form of archive system, therefore there could possibly be some copyright issues. These have been overcome through the few changes made to the original photographs and a copyright line will be added on the back cover before submission.