I decided to visit the WHSmith bookshop with the intention of finding some existing covers to analyse. It's actually very hard to find decently designed covers as the majority of them out there are so bad. I picked out a couple of the books that stood out to me:
Richard Green's cover design for The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells perfectly captures this "story of the future. Such a strong and simple design is appropriate for a book as serious as this one. Personally, I love the power in the simplicity and how so little can say so much. The small bee image creates an instant connection to the title as well as recognition for the viewer. Granted, this cover is not witty, however, that wouldn't fit the tone of writing. It is clever, impactful, and appropriate.
"A manifesto about the most dangerous form of information - the news."
"A welcome source of calm and wisdom."
The idea here is clever but I think that it could have been executed in a much better way, or even just thought about differently to produce a better outcome. The use of the newspaper grid to layout the text is interesting and effective however I wouldn't have included the grid lines as this takes away some of the effect and also doesn't leave room for negative space. Also, all of the fonts that have been used are really poor choices, why not use an actual newspaper font or one reminiscent of one? The fonts that they have used stick out in a bad way and bring down the overall tone of the design - taking it from what could be a nice, clever, contemporary design to a gimmick.
No comments:
Post a Comment