Mock up of my final outcome.

After looking at many techniques and designers, I have finally come to the conclusion of my book cover is to have a double exposure / clipping mask effect. I feel this will benefit my chosen books as the stories are detailed enough to get straight to the point, which is what I want my cover to do. Get straight to the point by explaining what is happening in the book. I like this minimalist approach hope that it really works with the Brothers Grimm books.   

SKETCH

Here is a rough sketch of how I hope and plan my final five books will look like. With this particular sketch of the story Cinderella; I want to capture the main objects or characters that are in the story to try and make a clipping mask or a double exposure that involves two parts of the story that is very prominent. With a few annotations added and the things that I will do to the background, and where I will place the photos and the text. I also worked out the measurements that the jacket needs to be to fit all five books, making the calculation width wise more bigger making sure the design fits perfectly. I feel working within a minimalist way, they will work really well with the books as the stories are fairy tales and are aimed at children of a young age.  

DIGITAL

After the sketch that I drew for one of the books. I took it upon myself to design a digital version of how I vision my work to look like. I started off by opening Adobe Photoshop and opening a document that would be a similar size for the jackets to cover the book. After that I made the background blue and uploaded a bar code and the logo of the book company that published the edition of the Grimm Brothers books, Penguin. What I did next was uploaded my experiment of the Double Exposure technique, inspired by Rown Stocks-Moore, to be my prototype design. Placing the image in the correct position that I thought would work well on the font cover of the jacket. Next, I used a typeface that I made on iFontmaker, to use as the title on the cover, spine and for the blurb on the back on the jacket, which tells you a little bit about the book itself. Finally, I felt that the back of the jacket-cover looked a little bit bare, so I made a silhouette of another object that is a really important part of the story. By making the object of the clock black, it adds to the minimalist theme of the design and technique.     

Final Ideas

HERE IS A QUICK INDIVIDUAL PLAN OF WHAT IMAGES TO TAKE AND A SKETCH OF ONE OF THE OBJECTS.

Here is quick mind map of the photos that I might take for some clipping masks. 

Final in-depth analysis

Here is a a book cover design by designer John Gall. This particular design is for a book called 'Sweet Bird of Youth' by Tennessee Williams. The concept of the story is about a Chance Wayne who returns to his home town as the accompaniment of a faded movie star. I believe that the techniques that has been used is clipping masks. Gall has used incorporated photography, to make the clipping mask seem more real.   

I have selected this artists because of how effective the clipping mask technique. I felt that the clipping masks have worked really well with the story of the book, is a really unique concept that really captured my eye when I first saw it. I find this work really inspiring because of how Gall has introduce the shape of a bird into the design. A symbol of a bird represents youth and this fits perfectly with the title. I also like to think you can get two different views when looking at this. For example looking from a distance you can't really see the photograph of the girl that has been embedded in the birds wings, you just see a pattern and a show of the bird. However as you begin to look closer to the design you can see that the creatures pattern on the wings is actually a photograph of a young girl that look sweet and innocent, like as the name of the book suggests.  

This particular design by Gall links very well to one of my initial ideas. I feel that working with a clipping mask technique and pictures, it will create a really simple but an effective look that I think will suit the style I'm thinking of creating for my five Brothers Grimm books. What ideas have you got in response to this work? The ideas that I have got from this particular artist, John Gall, is the how something so simple of a 'silhouette' of a bird and the amount of shape and detail that has gone into making the outline of the bird. Also by having the addition of the photograph introduced into the bird has worked perfectly. And it has really inspired me to be more ambitious with the type of silhouettes that I may use for each of the books. Out of the designers that I have seen John Gall has really inspired me to create a really minimalistic idea that will compensate well with my five books, hopefully I will be able to make and design something as good as Gall's work.
  

Experiments inspired by Initial Designers

Initial Idea 1

Here is my double exposure type experiment inspired by Rowan Stocks-Moore. How I created this image was by using my own photograph of a pair of shoes, tracing the image with a black pen, then scanning it into the computer. After that I then used an image from the internet of 'Cinderella', and used that as the background for the double exposure. Then using the magnetic also tool, I drew around the image of the girl in the shape of the shoes which underneath the tracing of the shoes. I added a blue background to make the exposure seem more dominate on the page. I like this technique a lot because it might seem quite technical to achieve but it is actually really simple to do.  

Initial Idea 2

Above is my next idea, inspired by Lynn Buckley. Her concept of design is combining drawings and photography together. I firstly started off with a photograph of my self that I made slightly bigger to fill an A4 piece of paper. My next step was too trace lightly around half of the face, exploring all of the detail in the picture. After I scanned the traced imaged into the computer, I then used Photoshop to create two layers; the bottom with the original photograph and the top layer with the drawing. I made sure that I placed the drawing directly on top of where the original image was. On the drawing layer I used the paint brush and fill bucket tools to add the right colours to the image. I liked the process of this experiment because it was a step by step guide which was pretty easy to follow. If I had to change anything about this experiment it would be to use different mediums, like paints, pencils, chalk. The reason why this is to get different textures and feels of the image, instead of relying on the digital effect.          

Initial Idea 3

My final experiment that I created in photoshop was inspired by Christian Jackson's minimalist illustrations. Again I used an picture of a pair of shoes that I photographed, and traced around them. I scanned the drawing into Adobe Illustrator, and expanded the image so that the lines would be more neater and cleaner in appearance. For each section of the shoes I added different colours into the area making the image more illustrational like. I added a blue gradient colour into the bows, a grey/silver into the side of the shoes and then a darker grey into the shoes itself. I like this type of experiment because it is really simple and can transform any image you want to create into a great illustrational image.