Book cover Evaluation

im really pleased with how my book cover turned out, and i preferred this project to the propaganda poster, the book cover had a lot of depth and interesting angles to explore and it was fun to read the story and then figure out how to tranlate the fictional reality into an origional intriging design. The big sleep was a lot of fun, the characters however cliche revolved around a lot of style  and dry humour, something that i think ive managed to portray. i was very much inspired by Matisse and Saul Bass whose cut out style generated my covers overall theme. James bond and the general silhouette openings at the beginning of the films also helped to inspire although i didnt really actively research any of the title sequences themselves. Mostly i like the fact that my book cover has a lot of meaning and relation to the book, each chess piece is a representation of a character, the crack on the queen symbolises Carmen Sternwoods fractured mentality as well as the overall theme of corruption evident within the novel (the police, the gangsters even LA as a whole). i couldnt resist incorporating the blood stain to frame the bottom of the cover to introduce a sense of intrigue and mystery. despite this the design is actually pretty light hearted (established mainly via the angular style) which was important since i wanted to fully convey the dry cynacism of the writing as homage to the 1930/40s era.

i'd have liked to explore the Wind in the Willows (which i immediatly dismissed because i despised the book as a child ) just because i think the setting has a lot of possibilities and it would have been intresting to illustrate for a younger target audience. however i think it would have been harder to find something origional than it was for the big sleep and i doubt i would have enjoyed the project as much since i already have preconceptions of great dislike. I'd never heard of the big sleep before so it was easier to begin the project with no preformed ideas that would have influenced the overall design.

i think my illustrator skills have improved the more comfortable i get with the software the more i explore- although on my cover the creation of the design revolved around drawing and brushes (much like the poster) i feel a lot more confident about using it. i made my own hand drawn type to match the rest of the cover which looked really effective and gave me insight into drawing letter (certainly not as easy as it looks) thankfully due to the angularity of the style i didnt have to worry that much about the perfect type. after using illustrator using photoshop for my poster was disconcerting and it did take me a while to remember that the controls were different, despite this im generally pleased with my poster - i would have liked to have incorporated a queen chess piece in the design as well but i didnt have enough time to create one and there probably wouldnt have been enough room even if i had.

overall really happy, lots of enjoyment and a nice cover at the end.