ILL 201.7. Creating Expressive Images

Creating Expressive Images: Illustrating Book Covers

ILL 201.7

BRIEF

This project simulated the freedoms and challenges of book cover design through the vector of conceptualising and executing illustrative book covers based on the theme of mythology. We were required to do research on myths around the world and choose one to be transformed into a three-part epic. The chosen myth had to be divided into three parts to act as a trilogy. Therefore, three distinct cover designs were required, each encompassing the part of the story it represented.

Each cover had to rely mainly on an illustrative approach, expressing a unique drawing style arrived at through research and personal exploration. Although each book cover would have its own, unique design, a similar illustrative approach or theme had to unite the designs as part of one, coherent whole.

DELIVERABLES
3 x Book Cover Designs handed in digitally as PDFs and PNGs
3 x Book Cover Designs (220x140mm) mounted on an A2 blackboard or three seperate A4 blackboards
1 x Process work in an A5 booklet/notebook/journal

DESIGN STRATEGY

The myth I chose to base my book covers on was the myth of the Inuit goddess of the sea Sedna. The story is split into three parts: The Wedding, The Storm, and The Wrathful Goddess. The story follows Sedna when she was the most beautiful young woman in her village, her hair is the longest and the shiniest, and her father is eager to see her married. She stubbornly refuses and in an act of defiance, marries her husky dog instead. When her father hears of this he becomes enraged and drowns the dog. Sedna is so heartbroken that she agrees to marry the very next suitor that she meets. Her new husband takes her to his island home where he reveals himself to be a giant bird spirit and not a man. News of this finds her father and he sets out in his kayak to rescue her. As Sedna escapes the sleeping bird spirit with her father, it wakes and apon realising she is gone makes a storm with it's wings out of anger. In a last effort to win back favour with the spirit, Sedna's father throws her overboard but she clutches the side of the kayak tightly, so he cuts off her fingers and she sinks to the bottom of the ocean. As she sinks down her severed fingers turn into the main sea mammals that the inuit hunt: the sea lion, the narwal, the orca and the beluga whale.

Sedna becomes goddess of the sea and when she is unhappy she keeps all the sea creatures tangled in her hair and the shamans have to go into trans and swim down to where she lives and comb her hair so that she releases the sea creatures.

PROCESS WORK

moodboards, colour scheme and type choice