Duration: 20 hours
Team Members: Solo
Skills Applied: Adobe Illustrator, Composition, Sketching, Typography
Tools Used: N/A
In this project, I designed covers for 3 of my favorite dystopian novels. I decided to do illustrations that spanned both covers because I felt as though the barrier between “front” and “back” felt too rigid and a sense of exploration could be integrated into the covers by the reader picking up the book and seeing the cover, then becoming intrigued to look across the spine and back in order to make the full connection between the sides and reveal the whole image. I played with placing informative text on the backs of the covers but I ultimately decided against it as I felt it detracted from the composition of the illustrations. Each cover portrays antagonistic figures in red tones and neutral or good objects and figures in blue tones.
Across all the books, I utilized the same color palette and featured one gradiented object in each illustration. In 1984, the eye beam contains an orange to red gradient. In Fahrenheit 451, the papers have a burn gradient on them ranging from brown to white. In DADOES the window light contains a gradient from dark blue to white. In each of these instances, the gradiented object is an important concept to the stories. The beam represents the gaze of Big Brother in 1951. The papers are the central object of conflict in Fahrenheit 451. The window light in DADOES represents the outside world and worlds, and the concept of the civilization outside of reach.
In 1984, the camera eye contains a small figure of a man, representing Big Brother. The good figure in the cover represents the common man. Their interaction is the constant presence of Big Brother, almost as though he is trying to gain access to our minds.
In Fahrenheit 451, the firefighter is the antagonistic figure, and represents the destruction of history and information. The building being burned down represents the structure of literature and history. The interaction between the two is the Firefighters job is to mindlessly destroy these books, regardless of the cost to life or history.
In DADOES, the antagonistic figure is what John Isidore represents in the the book, ignorance and blind faith. The good figure is Luba Luft, an android who is unaware of her status. The two do not directly interact as depicted, but rather John Isidores life depends on the information wired in, and Luba Lufts life ends because shes fails the Voigt-Kampff test.
Documentation can be seen on the next page.