The Pitch

i began my pitch by briefly displaying some of my initial research to give a vague idea of how i approached the project.

 

since i instantly researched silhouettes and knew that i wanted to include them in my design i showed some of the more effective ones i found ( they were all book covers which also gave me an idea of how effective silhouettes can look on an actual cover). i then looked into Matisse's work whose cut out playful jagged style was what i wanted to emulate.

when considering fonts i knew that i needed to look for two- one for the title and another for the blurb and possibly authors name. for the main title i wanted to create something that matched the cut out silhouette style- i liked the font on the modern and current cover of the big sleep but i wanted something a little edgier and jagged. i did look briefly into some previously existing fonts that referenced the art deco period but i found them all to clean and neat and not in keeping at all with my design because of this i want to make my own font for the big sleep ( ive drawn it out roughly in the right). for the blurb i knew that the font had to be legible but had to look good at a smaller size whilst remaining in keeping with the rest of my design. since i wanted to really emphasise the detective genre i plan on using a typewriter font which i think will elucidate the time period and the genre, i did like one of the typewritten ones found on dafont ( second up from the bottom) but im swaying more to the standard OCR A STD font because it looks good at a smaller size.

i had two designs that i really liked - this was my least favourite out of the two but i thought i would show it anyway just incase my peers liked certain aspects that i could incorporate in my other design. it was decided by general concensus that this design was too complicated and didnt initially attract the eye although they did like the positioning of the authors name in the bullets tragectory.

this was my second design and the one that i felt was more effective- again a film noir colour scheme ( i wanted to keep the colours relatively simple in order to make the design bolder). this got much better feedback, my peers liked the textural silhouettes which added interest to the dark fill chess pieces they also preferred its simplicity which was more eyecatching and made the design seem bolder. it was suggested that i needed to move the gun of the spine since i wasnt clear why it was seperated from the rest of the figure which i agreed with and that the spine should simply be the title and authors name rather than the extra details incorporated at the edges. with a little tweaking this is going to be my final design ( i plan on creating the book cover in illustrator since its got a very hand drawn feel to it which i can generate through the use of a graphics tablet, and a lot of solid shapes that will be easier to create in illustrator rather than photoshop.