Sunday, February 6, 2011

HG Wells: Words to love

Ann Veronica: hard cover. I used a word that summarized the essence of each book on the hard covers.
Ann Veronica: reversible newsprint dust covers
Ann Veronica: the covers as posters
Mr Polly: dust covers

Mr Polly: posters
Love and Mr Lewisham: dust covers

Love and Mr Lewisham: posters


Hey Audrey!

You already know that I am obsessed with book covers. I want to show you these covers I designed as a solution to one of the D&AD 2010 student briefs (www.dandad.org). The brief was to design covers for HG Wells' lesser known novels that would appeal to a younger audience. When I read these books, I was struck with how powerfully they were written, and decided the best way to sell them would be to put the words right out there: on the front cover. The covers are reversible: the one side starts a snippet of writing from the novel in simple typography, which is continued on the reverse, which is more photography based. As the characters in all three novels go through a transformation, I chose photos of people set in the London Underground waiting to go somewhere, or already on their way there. The font I used was Frutiger, designed by my favourite typeface designer, Adrian Frutiger, for an airport wayfinding system. The typeface consist of many beautiful variations, which I used to emphasize the meaning of the words. The covers were printed on a newsprint-like 100% recycled paper stock called Cyclus. Oh, and one can put them up as posters on the wall if one really likes them. I really enjoyed doing this brief.