Penguin Book Cover Designs

Penguin Books have been running a competition to re-design two classic books; 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' & 'Grimms Fairy Tales'. I started with the intention of entering for both but time was against me so I just stuck with 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'.

After doing some quick doodles I came up with the idea to illustrate the literal meaning of the book title, might be too quirky or cliché but you never know what there looking for. I wanted to have hand drawn illustrations in this design as they would look much better than if I drew them digitally. So I did just that :) 

Flying man illustration

'1' flying over the nest

Hand drawn text

The drawings were sketched in blue, then inked in black. Scanning these in black & white mode ignores all the blue and shows the above results, it's a trick I wish I knew years ago.
I painted small birds with the intention of using them in the design but I felt there was too much happening with them in. 
Below are different variations of the cover design leading up to the final cover that I submitted;

First design

When I finished the above design I knew it just wasn't working, the text was just ok and the white    box at the back wasn't doing it any favours. After speaking with Padraic (Typography lecturer) he suggested a more interesting font, take away the white box change the size of the text in the blurb. 

Second design

The second design with the hand drawn text added, back cover changed and the cuckoo nest changed to a new colour.

Variation of second design

Variation of the second design with the flying man illustration. I'm torn between the two ideas.

Third design

After chatting Padraic some more we considered the use of chicken wire in the design, the chicken wire represents the imprisonment of the men in the asylum. The hand drawn text & cuckoo nest were enlarged and the blurb text was also changed.

Variation of third design

Variation of the third design with the flying man illustration. Still not sure which cover I'm going to submit at this point.

Final submitted design

In the end I decided to go with this design. I prefer the '1' flying over the nest instead of the man, I think it's quirkier and a bit more humorous. To make sure I wasn't making a horrible mistake I even did a quick survey to see which some people preferred, luckily I had made the right choice.
It was interesting working on this, I'm not particularly bothered about winning I just enjoyed the chance to submit my work to Penguin Books :)

nICE Typography

Came across the examples of ice typography on a recycle art website. The artist Nicole Dextras builds wooden templates which are then filled with water and left to freeze, sometimes with the addition of food colouring. It's a pretty cool way to present words and messages but the only downside being that there going to melt. The melting process could also be used as part of the type too or it could be used to highlight a message, 'Global Warming' for example.