Brief
“Your brief is to design a stunning and contemporary cover for one of the 20th century’s
most acclaimed authors, HG Wells. Known mostly for his science fiction writing, HG Wells also wrote social novels that are still relevant today, covering topics such as the mid-life crisis, class, feminism, materialism, consumerism and love. Your challenge is to create cover designs for three of his books that work as a set and establish the books as timeless fiction. The books will be published in a paperback format and need to include the title, author’s name, publishers name and trademark. You only need to design the front cover and spine.“
First Thoughts
Okay so after reading the project that accompanies this exercise I realised I wasn’t sure who H.G Wells was, well not until I checked out some of his titles, I give myself a knock on the head, a doh moment (The Simpsons) because this gentleman was and still is a huge figure that completely changed history and what we thought about science fiction. I am a big fan of some of Wells’ work including ‘The War Of The Worlds’ and ‘The Invisible Man’. What I now know about Wells after watching a youtube video on his history is that Wells was controversial in his writing and was turned back by a huge organisation called Academie Francaise sometimes referred to as the French Academy. He brought amazing insights into the world of science fiction and demonstrated in his writing how technology and science when combined, will take humanity to amazing heights. He also portrayed the not so nice side of science and technology and how it could also take us down the wrong path, hence his title ‘The War Of The Worlds’, this is where his controversy made him unliked by a certain amount of other popular science fiction authors at that time.
What Am I Being Asked To Do
I am being asked to “design a stunning and contemporary cover for one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed authors, HG Wells”.
“Create cover designs for three of his books that work as a set and establish the books as timeless fiction”
Research
So first of all I decided to get to know H.G Wells a
So, first of all, I decided to get to know H.G Wells a little bit more, I felt that the more I can become more emotionally in tune with Wells as a human being, what his values were and what he believed in, would make it easier for me to choose and create a design for 3 of Wells’ titles.
I did this by creating a mind map, I thought this practice would help not only for me to get to know H.G Wells but to also help me figure out what titles I would choose for my design work.
The titles I chose are as follows:
1-When The Sleeper Awakes
2-The First Men In The Moon
3-The War Of The Worlds
I chose these titles after using the internet to do my research, I got to know Wells more by finding out what his writing style was like, what themes he portrays in his novels and what kind of objects he envisioned. I found out that the style of his writing is dark, futuristic and utopian. The reason these styles stand out to me is that I have a huge interest in futuristic and utopian and a matter of fact, one of my favourite artists is Simon Stalenhag whose style of writing is described as retro-futuristic, Stalenhag is up there with my favourite artists because of his ambient, dark, futuristic style and he has a couple of music albums that are the sound of dark, retro-futuristic and a low-fi ambient sound that matches his artwork. If H.G Wells needed a soundtrack or artwork for one of his novels or film then I would recommend Simon Stalenhag.
Stalenhags music is here:
Music For Dos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn7sdC8rKqM&list=OLAK5uy_lWUHfM87_5svYbCsqeO-uxtc-6lTxWGFA&index=1
The Electric State
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocbq1uEgsf0&list=OLAK5uy_mKXlMc6jkqQtZ9NNEJb7yJNvfTmQJCoCc&index=1
Stalenhags artwork is here:
https://www.simonstalenhag.se/
Some of the themes portrayed in Wells’ novels are time travel, alien invasions and biological engineering. I love all this kind of stuff and have read similar topics in books by Aldous Huxley, with his most popular book Brave New World. In Wells’ novels he also invisions space travel and nuclear weapons, merely a myth at the time Wells published his novels but a real thing in this current day.
I’m not quite sure why i’m so fascinated by the theories of these topics, I think I am just so inquisitive to what else is out there apart from what I see in front of me or what I see in the media. All human beings are born the same and brought up with the same teachings in school, but the topic of time travel, alien invasions or biological engineering were never touched on for me personally so to find Aldoux Huxley and H.G. Wells was a really exciting time for me as I got to experience and learn about the world in a different way to what I already knew.
Part of my research involved me searching the internet for fan art and other editions of popular H.G Wells novels, I wanted to see if anything would stand out to me straight away that helped assist my choice. Google images displayed some beautiful images but because I am not entirely clued up on copyright and using peoples images on my own site, so I went over to good old trusty Pinterest where I can embed images that I find on the web. Let’s have a look at some fan art and other editions of the same novel that inspired me to chose the titles I did.
When The Sleeper Awakes
The First Men In The Moon
The War Of The Worlds
Okay so at this point I was happy with my chosen titles. I didn’t want to get ahead of myself so I decided to focus on one title at a time but still have in mind that all three designs are part of a set and should be of the same style. Before getting into the nitty and gritty of designing my covers, I had to decide what style I would use to portray what the novel is about in a beautiful visual language.
Visual Research
The brief mentions establishing the set of books as timeless fiction, my understanding of timeless fiction is that the books are as popular now as they were when the books were published. Straight away the first thing that came to mind was modernising the covers so I had a look online to see what book cover designs were trending. As I carried out this research I had a couple of hunches and remembered that I have a Pinterest board for movie posters and how much I liked minimalistic style posters. https://www.pinterest.co.uk/GIANTSFOREST/how-to-create-poster-art/. So from this, I wondered about how I could turn my chosen titles into minimalistic designs that still explained what the novel is about in a slightly abstract way. My choice was between minimalistic, abstract and designing a scene from each novel and illustrating it, I decided to go down the minimalistic route because I had in my mind how I could keep the style fluid across all three designs with closely related colour schemes and similar line art. I thought if I could demonstrate the nature of the story in one simple vector image in the centre of the page with a similar colour scheme, then the reader would see that all 3 are linked. I decided I would also keep the same placement for text across my designs.
So next I wanted to decide on what font to use so I decided to search fonts that were released at the same time H.G. Wells was most popular. After my research, I came across a video with the title ‘Why Is This Font Everywhere‘. I found this video on a news app that I use on my phone called Flipboard and coincidentally the video came up in my already created graphic design board. I watched the video and funnily enough the font promoted in the video was released in 1922. Perfect. Not only do I love the font they were talking about, it also fits nicely with my timeline. Cooper Black is the type I went for and is hugely popular now as it was 100 years ago. Cooper Black was designed by a Chicago designer who went by the name Oswald Cooper. This stylish and fun font was used in everything from newspapers, magazines, sweets, shop signs and the album cover for The Beach Boys album ‘Pet Sounds’. Cooper black is still used in the modern-day, it is the logo for the airline EasyJet and the brand Uncle Ben.
Design Work
For each of my designs, I started sketching ideas and then came up with the final design using a mixture of Photoshop and Illustrator. I used photoshop for colour, placement and type but prefer to use Illustrator for drawing the image.
I found the publisher information using Wikipedia and found out that Harper & Brothers originally published the ‘The Sleeper Awakes’ and ‘The War Of The Worlds’ and for the logo, I found a Png file on google and embedded it on the novel designs using photoshop. For The novel ‘The First Men In The Moon’ I found out it was published in the U.S by Bobbs-Merrill Company and in the U.K by George Newnes but unfortunately, I could not find the publisher company logo so I used my own on photoshop using the Blackadder ITC font purely because I thought the font looked cool and would make the best-looking logo using a basic tool on Photoshop.
The Sleeper Awakes
For this design, I started on paper and the first thing I asked myself was what represents time, ‘The Sleeper Awakes is about a man who falls asleep for 200 years. To keep the design minimal and slightly abstract I wondered to myself how could I come up with an image that represents time, sleep and waking up. This is when I decided to use an hourglass that represents time, I could have also used a watch, a clock or something else that resembles time like ‘Stonehenge’ and its meaning in Astronomy. These were all great but how could they resemble time and a man who sleeps and wakes up at a certain time through visual language. This is when I came up with the idea of putting the man inside the hourglass asleep on top of the sand so when the sand all falls down through the glass, the man will wake up. The bold title ‘The Sleeper Awakes’ will let the reader know that when the hourglass empties, the sleeping man will awake.
The First Men In The Moon
For this design, I chose to redesign the cover for ‘The First Men In The Moon’. This novel is about 2 men who took a journey to the moon to carry out experiments. I wanted to keep the design simple and leave a lot of imagination to the reader so I decided to use Illustrator to create an image of a man, duplicated him and putting these happy chaps on top of a moon. After completing the design I went back to my sketches and prefered my 4th design as you can see below, I feel with one man sat down on the bottom of the moon and a man on top of the moon tells the reader that the men both took a trip to the moon but for different reasons, one man being a businessman stood on top showing he means business with his briefcase when the other man who is described as an eccentric scientist, sits down quietly at the bottom of the moon with his unconventional and slightly strange personality.
The War Of The Worlds
My final design is ‘The War Of The Worlds’. This novel is about the conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial race. Although it is not completely abstract because the reader can see straight away that the world could potentially be in trouble, and that aliens have come to earth but I didn’t display anything that could depict disaster or war so that I could leave the reader using their imagination.
Reflection
Okay as I sit down to reflect on this exercise I think about what I liked about the exercise and first thing that comes to mind is how happy I am to have more knowledge on H.G. Wells and the world of science fiction. I am going to explore more of H.G. Wells and check out his novels! I love to be part of something that changed lives and had a huge effect on culture, and the way we look at science, engineering and the possibilities that come with it but also the downfalls. So saying that I look forward to reading more of his novels to understand how Wells’ writing style changed a lot of people’s lives.
I learned a lot in this exercise but touching on what I could do better first, I felt like I didn’t have much of a structure and didn’t know if I was coming or going, and found myself constantly taking a step backwards to fill in the gaps or amend something I had already written or designed. I guess it comes down to me being a perfectionist and never really being completely happy with what I am producing, but I know this will come with time and to not stress about it but to enjoy the ride. I found that I have to relax and to trust the process in what I am doing. Going forward I would like to find a structure that I can follow in each exercise, for 2 reasons, 1 to make it easier for me to stay on track with what I am doing and 2 to speed up the process because I find I waste a lot of time procrastinating on low priority tasks when I could use that energy to focus on the main parts of the exercise.
I am about to turn 32 and love the fact I can still use my imagination and do something I love which is drawing and designing. I never want to lose my inner child and having the chance to jump into my sketchbook excites me 10 fold, so being able to sketch some ideas for this exercise had my imagination flowing and I feel I was able to produce some nice designs. I do love drawing and designing but I feel when it comes to writing, I lack slightly in staying on topic without rambling but again, this will come with practice and I am excited for what comes next.
Going forward my main ambitions are:
- Creating a structure
- Setting goals and sticking to deadlines
- Improving my writing skills
- Adding more research notes
Tutor Feedback
This project builds upon the previous one and is about analysing the brief.
You were asked to reflect on different ways of researching and developing
ideas, and to put these into practice by designing covers of an HG Wells
novel. Overall you are using research to broaden your understanding of the
brief and to stimulate ideas.
You started well by identifying gaps in your knowledge and using research to
deepen your understanding of the novels of HG Wells. A synopsis for each
novel would be helpful to get a feel for the story which can be used to
generate ideas.
You have gathered a range of book cover designs for Wells’s work but it’s not
clear how this has shaped your design thinking. It’s important to analyse your
research and say how this has shaped your approach to this task. After
studying your selection of book cover designs you could comment on the
following design elements: the visual language of the overall design of each
book cover, the layout, typefaces used. You could compare all covers and see
if you can identify the common elements / similarities used on the covers.
Tip: Try to expand your understanding of designing for book covers by
researching this subject. For instance, what makes a good cover design for a
book? Reading relevant books and magazine articles help you to understand
the subject under investigations and show your research skills, here are some
books that might be of interest to you:
Classic Penguin: Cover to Cover Paperback – Penguin Books (USA); 01 edition (28 July
2016)
• Book Cover Designs, Matthew Goodman, Schiffer Publishing Ltd (US) (1 Jan. 2000)
• The Illustrated Dust Jacket: 1920-1970: The Illustrated Book Jacket, 1920-1970 by Martin
Salisbury, Pub: Thames & Hudson Ltd; 01 edition (5 Oct. 2017)
It’s good to see you have started to think about “timeless fiction” and that you
are conducting some visual research into this. I enjoyed seeing the work of
Stalenhag, in future select a couple of pieces of his work to include on your
blog. His work has a strong futuristic and strange aesthetic – which could be
why not mock up a book cover to see how this would work as an HG Well’s
cover? This might give you some new ideas.
Good reference is given to typographer Oswold Cooper and Cooper Black
typeface. I guess you picked this because you consider it a ‘timeless’
typeface? I enjoyed seeing the different historic applications of this typeface
on your blog. More experiments with Coper Black would be interesting to see,
try playing around with scale, orientation, colour and placement on the book
jacket. How can you make it grab the viewer’s eye?
It is good you to hear how the research process has helped you to find
direction in your work. Your book covers have a strong sense of series as they
have a similar format, stick to one colour and use simple imagery. The
Sleeper Awakes cover is my favourite because it is a stronger idea and more
original. To develop these covers further you could try adding some texture of
to your images, for example – a sand texture could add some visual interest
to The Sleeper Awakes.
Stephen Furber 