WHAT DOES THE
COVER REALLY SAY?
This is quite a nice example by Michael Dorrian and Liz Farrelly for their book about Business Card Design. Firstly the name works really well - Designs on Saying Hello - because that's basically what a business card does. Secondly their grid sets up a nice graphic visual that shows the diversity available. Book available from Laurence King Publishing.
Back and front of Daniel Eatock's book Imprint. The cover consists of a thumbprint made up of all his reasons for designing and the spine carries an actual inked thumbprint of his. Yep, he did every single spine by inking up his thumb and then placing it on the spine. Check out the video here (or below) for proof. That's dedication, I don't know what the print run was but you've got to assume, for a worldwide book, it's at least 5000...probably more. Check out his site he has some amazing art projects he's started.
Okay now lets have a quick look at a bunch of titles from Laurence King Publishing (really I'm not working for them - they just have some good examples that help explain cover concept - books are linked via clicking on the pictures). Look at how all these cover images link directly to the books content - this is what we need to try and do with our book covers.
These are all pretty obvious examples. What about ones that are not so easy. What do these ones say about the artist/designer/studio?
Front cover for FUEL, Back and front cover for Phunk Studio and front cover for Misprinted Type.
Every image you put onto the cover will be instantly associated with what's inside. It's up to you as the designer to make sure that the image message and the inside message marry or make sense. Fuel creates a sense of being well read and learned by showing themselves made from books. Phunk Studio create a very different feel about their work inside just by having such a suggestive cover. What does Eduardo Recife (Misprinted Type) suggest with his cover?
So that's what the professionals do, lets have a look at some previous student examples:
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WHAT WILL YOUR
COVER SAY?
When we come to designing your cover for your artist/studio/designer I'm keen that we actually have something to design. What I mean by that is I don't want just a jpeg of one the artist's artworks on the front cover. That doesn't show you can design, it shows you know how to download a pic from the internet and place an image in InDesign.
With this in mind I'm going to set some rules and you can find a way to work around them. On the cover you must:
- Include your word mark.
- Include a text quote from an applicable media publisher.
- Include the artist's name (The artwork of ... / The strange world of ...)
- Use at least 5 pieces of the artist's artwork in a mash-up form.
- Create a cover that is visually interesting from a distance.
- Create a cover that holds up in resolution upon close inspection.
- Create a cover that re-interprets and expresses the artist's style and sensibilities.
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THE SPINE OF DESIGN
by John D. Berry
The next question to tackle is how to help the book when it's on the bookshelf. In this case you can only see the spine and have considerably less space to design in. The beautiful, dramatic cover, where great effort and expense weren't spared, never gets seen if a browsing book buyer doesn't reach out and pull the book off the shelf.
Sometimes the book might be fat enough to allow you to design the spine horizontally, so that the words are the right way up when viewed by the browser's eye. In most cases the spine is not thick enough to allow large enough type size, the type instead is turned at right angles to the viewer's eye, in order to run along the vertical spine.
In North America, the normal direction is from top to bottom; in Europe, it's usually bottom to top. (This means that in North America, in a pile of books stacked face up, all the titles are easy to read; in Europe, it's the pile of books stacked face down, with no front covers visible at all, where the titles on the spines are easy to read. The biggest practical effect is that readers browsing the shelves in a European bookstore crick their necks to the left, while those in North America crick theirs to the right.)
Since the type is not aligned with the way we normally read, it has to be even clearer than it would otherwise. Crowded, cramped type gets lost in the clutter. No matter what the front cover looks like, capital letters make the best use of the narrow spine (no ascenders or descenders to extrude into the limited space). A little extra space between the letters -- even more than you'd give them in a horizontal line -- helps them stand out and be read. Read more.
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WHAT WILL YOUR
SPINE SAY?
Spine rules. On the spine you must:
- Include your word mark, but in a lengthened format to fit spine.
- Include a logo of the media publisher.
- Include the artist's name (The artwork of ... / The strange world of ...)
- Create a spine that is visually interesting from a distance.
- Work in the American format (from top to bottom)
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HOMEWORK FOR
THE WEEKEND
What, don't tell me you had plans!?
This wont take too long and it's very easy. I want you to put together a little monogram for yourself. Start with you initials and see what different ways of writing them there are. Then see how they interact with each other. Finally see if there is something symbolic you can find within the letter-forms. Just to remind you I've put the step by step guide down below:
- Don't start on the computer, a nice big empty A4 page is perfect, and remember - thumbnails are as big as we need at this point.
- Use a black art-liner of 0.2 or 0.4 nib, it will mean that what ever you do will be set in stone and not able to be rubbed out. I like to use a 0.2 nib as it has more flex, unfortunately it also means that it breaks easy so have some spares ready.
- Explore the letters of your abbreviated name. What different ways can you draw the letters? Get all your ideas down; draw them in capital form, heavily styled, heavily simplified, script, block etc. What we are looking for is an understanding of the letters and their uniqueness.
- Start to play with the letters and how they interact with each other. How do they relate, can they fit together, overlap in some interesting and aesthetic way? At this point we are still playing with the letters and should not necessarily think the logo will just appear.
- Try to incorporate the visual ideas that resemble something you represent. Could the letters correlate to form a visual representation in some way? Could we get the letters to mimic a belief or mission we hope for ourselves, or is it something more literal, for instance an football, a graffiti can?
LETTER-MARKS
(Monograms)
A design of one or more letters, usually the initials of a name, used to identify a company, publication, person, object, or idea. Also known as a monogram. A monogram usually refers to the use of two or more letters from a name. A monogram may have signed the artistic products (sculptures, pieces of furniture, artwork etc) of craftsmen, especially when the guilds were involved. Kings and Queens used monograms as a way of showing the depth of their ownership, just as companies could be said to be doing that now.
Advantages
The letter-mark solves both mnemonic and legibility issues. It also remains easier to fit to a design than using the whole name or word-mark.
Disadvantages
Letter-marks are often masquerading as logos. Generic initials, treated in clever ways may look better on towels and glasses than on a corporate business card. Initials woven together have very little meaning. Most letter-marks depend on large-scale audience contact, high advertising spend and repeated viewing for recognition.
Designers using letter-marks often try to make the letters form a pictorial association with the product or service, thus suggesting more about the company and giving it a secondary meaning. Paul Rand's Westinghouse design symbolises the origins of the appliances company that started out in the kitchen, namely stoves - also gives a crown to the company. Kodak is a flash and LG a smiling face? United Airlines created by Saul Bass in 1973. Nicknamed the tulip it was created to convey leadership and innovation.
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CASE STUDY - HANDSPRING (1998-2003)
Handspring was a company that produced software and hardware for personal digital assistants. It was founded by the makers of the original Palm Pilot who had become unhappy with the direction in which 3Com was taking the Palm industry.
To them 3Com was becoming too business minded and ignoring the social aspects that the Palm could offer. They wanted something for a younger market that exude youth, vitality and a breaking free of constraints.
In 1998 they turned to Mortensen Design to design something that would express those beliefs. P,J, Nidecker chose letter-marks as the basis for his design.
He begins with the basic letters: H and S but begins to focus more and more on the H alone. Arrows begin to appear to show the forward thinking of the company. He runs the letters together overlapping and joining up to show the integration of design and technology the company wants to promote. Towards the end he starts to incorporate springs in relation to the company’s use of ‘springboard’ models that expand PDA’s capabilities. It’s here that he decides to focus more.
Here we have a ‘H’ springing backwards. It was decided that this might be seen unfavorably as a company doing a back flip is never very good. Especially in the new technology market. Then we go into another spring. A coil unwinding. This was also seen as having negative connotations.
Next brings in some more energy and the idea of a chain reaction, much like a ball bouncing in the way that one idea leads onto the next idea which leads onto the next... The spring was brought back but this time the cross section of the spring was focused on. This was seen as being too abstract.
The final began as a ‘H’ resembling a person jumping in the air. When turned upside down though it became a person doing a cartwheel. This had more energy and more excitement and summed up what the company were trying to get across as their USP. The colours blue, green and yellow were brought in to add vibrancy and the box was removed to make the figure appear even freer.
Interestingly in 2003 they merged with Palm Inc. to become palmOne. Do you think this logo works as well?
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RECAP ON BUILDING
LETTER-MARKS
Like when we start designing anything, especially logos, we don't want to start on the computer, a nice big empty page is perfect, and remember - thumbnails are as big as we need at this point.
Try using a black art-liner of 0.2 or 0.4 nib, it will mean that what ever you do will be set in stone and not able to be rubbed out. I like to use a 0.2 nib as it has more flex, unfortunately it also means that it breaks easy so have some spares ready.
Start with exploring the letters of your abbreviated name. What different ways can you draw the letters? Get all your ideas down; draw them in capital form, heavily styled, heavily simplified, script, block etc. What we are looking for is an understanding of the letters and their uniqueness.
Secondly we should start to play with the letters and how they interact with each other. How do they relate, can they fit together, overlap in some interesting and aesthetic way? At this point we are still playing with the letters and should not necessarily think the logo will just appear.
Lastly we should try to incorporate the visual ideas that resemble something the client/product/space represents. Could the letters correlate to form a visual representation in some way? Could we get the letters to mimic a belief or mission we hope for the space, or is it something more literal, for instance an old fishing dock in the shape of a fish, a new car brand in the shape of a car?
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INSPIRATION & EXTRAS
Each week I throw up things I find that relate to what we've been discussing or working on that week. Sometimes it might be things that relate to your major assessment and sometimes just stuff I thought was worth seeing. If you find something you think we should be showing or something we just have to see let us know in class or throw an email over to me at matt@billyblue.com.au and I'll get it up here or on the Bluni inspiration site.
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