OUGD603 - Penguin Student Design Award (Norwegian Wood) - Design Developments

Upon experimenting with type and image, it was decided to see how these would work on the book cover spread itself, favouring the two bird compositions. Exploring how the spine could be made interesting in order to help it potentially stand out on a typical bookshelf, one idea was to place another bird silhouette into the middle of this between the title and the author of the book. Not only would this give the spine an element to help it stand out, but it also ties the whole spread together nicely, linking with the design on the front cover. When the book is opened up, this would also create another scene in itself, as if a flock of birds flying together. It was also thought that the spine could feature a white strip in order to break it up slightly from the most prominent use of red, as well as, again, linking with the colour schemes of the design on the front colour. However, another variation tested this spine design without the white strip and manipulating the colours to match the white type cover variation, which could potentially make the birds look more together when all used on the same coloured background.

With the type on the above cover designs making better use of negative space by aligning the two words of the book's title, it was thought then that the author's name being centre aligned to match the word 'Norwegian' of the title made this alignment look off. Therefore this was manipulated so that everything was moved along slightly and the author's name was left aligned with the book's title as well as seemingly with the jar design.

Other variations explored placing the title of the book within an illustration of a ripped piece of paper, designed to the same pop-art aesthetic as the jar design, in order to represent the ripped piece of paper in which Naoko left her suicide note on which was thought could potentially enhance the concept of the design as representing Naoko's freedom from her illness after her death, whilst also potentially adding another dimension to the cover design that could perhaps make the use of white on the jar not so prominent. Within this, again, the use of the white strip on the spine was explored to see how this would work with the additional element.

One further idea was to explore how imagery could also be utilised on the back cover in order to tie the whole spread together in terms of its design. For this an illustration was produced of a hand holding a flag in representing the political aspect of the book. It was initially thought that type could feature within the flag, however due to the amount of information that is needed to be placed on the back cover, this would have meant the size of the type would have had to have been reduced quite dramatically which in turn would have compromised its effectiveness and legibility. For this reason, it was decided that the back cover would work better being more minimalistic in its design, due to this large amount of information needed and that the front cover design is probably strong enough in its design and concept to work effectively in its own right.

Continuing to think about the use of type, it was thought that in all the designs above, the type was too bold and, even though the title should also be something of importance, that this was overpowering the main design. For this reason, the type was manipulated further, scrapping the use of the note illustration and making the size of the type smaller. This was left-aligned, again, in order to make better use of the negative space, especially since now the type was smaller. It was thought these variations worked more effectively in meaning the design did not get too overcrowded and so allowing the design to stand out. It was found this also meant the type was not compromised in any way and the smaller size allowed this as well as the main design to both stand out in their own right.