Designing Three Covers

The Brief-
To Re-create 3 penguin book covers using the Marber Grid.

The Three Books-
The Jungle Book
The Great Gatsby
The Phantom of the Opera

Design approach Ideas-
- To encapsulate the narrative of the story 
- Re-create an Iconic part of the film
- Bring focus to the main character of the film

The Composition

I wanted to keep to the traditional layout and grid of the Marbers work by keeping the Title, Author, and publication layout identica: bringing focus to the illustration book design. 

The Jungle Book

This design was thought out straight away, and encapsulates the protagonist Mowgli and his two antagonists.

The Phantom of the Opera

Sketches of development Ideas

1) Sketch of the chandelier sketch from when the Phantom comes into the theatre

2) Main focus of the Phantom

3) The scene introducing both main characters through the iconic mirror

Final Outcome

The Great Gatsby

Sketches of development Ideas

1) A focus on Gatsby's ring and martini glass, iconic from The Great Gatsby Movie

2) A focus on the car driven and crashed into Myrtle Wilson - the turning point and reason for Gatsby's death

3) A focus on the two main characters representing to tragic love story of Gatsby and Daisy

Final Outcome

Overall Analysis:

TYPE

When designing the Penguin Book covers to explore the Marber Grid, the use of Type was heavily inspired by Marber’s work and traditional Penguin Book designs. Being the reason why Gill Sans was used, as this typeface is what is used for the Penguin type logo. Using the same typeface through the designs helped create a three series outcome, that showed consistency thus creating a successful book series.

COLOUR

When adding colour to the Penguin Book collection, one of the main aspects of each design was to encapsulate the narrative or characters of the plot. This aim was applied to each book to create an easy to identify link, and also create consistency throughout the front and back cover. The hues of the colours represented the mood of the book, for example the Jungle Book cover used a vibrant orange, linking to the antagonist Sheer Khan, but also the heat and vibrancy of India where the narrative is set. In comparison ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ design is a dark grey, linking to the darkness of the Phantom and the actions he makes.

LAYOUT

The Penguin Book Brief was based on having to use the Marber Grid to create series of books. The use of the Marber grid helped identify that applying rules to the layout creates a series of work that forms consistency. For the overall layout of the book, using Gutters and Columns helped the layout of the text to form an evenly balanced book cover both front and back. When using the Marber Grid to design the books, I created horizontal lines and bars that separated type from the imagery of the book design. Although keeping to the traditional style of a Penguin Book, possibly next time developing the work could involve still using the grid without visually outlining it on the cover, this would allow the cover to merge both image and text whilst still having structures layout.

FORMAT

The formats for the Penguin Book sleeves are identical to that of the original Penguin Book series. This made applying the Marber grid to the covers a lot easier to re-create and follow. If to be produced the book sleeves would be placed on an A3 sheet when printed, due to the fact the design exceeds A4 format.