Sketches: Stop The World!

Part of my work as a designer is to try to talk people out of a bad idea. Some ideas are poorly-thought-out, or they're unworkable, for whatever reason, or they're just — bad. Bad in that they'll work against the best interests of the project. In this case, a cover that will work against the book it's supposed to help promote.

For this book, I was given a (reasonably) catchy title and a cover concept — but a really bad photo. I think it must have been shot out-of-focus, printed on an inkjet printer (to screw up the color), and then scanned (to add more dust). I tried gently to suggest that that photo just wasn't going to work (as much for technical as aesthetic reasons) and instead I offered to create some concepts working off of the title.

I did about a zillion thumbnail sketches...


...and refined a handful that I liked, which I tightened up a bit for presentation.


The Author, however, was stubbornly insistent on her original concept — and that photo — so I'd have to find a way to work with it. I thought the best way to do that would be to put more of the burden on the type and design elements, thus, making the photo smaller (which might help to disguise some of the problems). Several sketches later...


I liked B. (in the center on top), and in fact, that was really the direction I wanted to go in -- the rest were only meant to offer a few more options for the sake of, well, offering options. Everyone ultimately agreed on a slight variation, D. (on the bottom), and that was probably all for the better, as it eliminates dead space at the top. (That little figure in the center holding the globe represents the photo.)



The final cover (on the left) worked out better than I thought it might. That photo — well, that photo still looks terrible, even after I did what I could to clean it up, improve the detail and adjust the color, but maybe it looks less terrible. Given the choice, I'd have probably done something similar to what I chose to do with the Title Page (on the right), with a slight adjustment to the word balloon. (I might have used the globe, too.)

By the way, if the type on the top of the cover looks kinda familiar, that's only because I swiped it from an earlier design. I had made a note to use that typeface (Bovine Poster) when I was doing the thumbnails, and once I started working on the cover I remembered having used it before, for more or less the same purpose. (It only ended up the same color further along in the process, though.)