Finito!

Following this post are the three finished products of this project. I thoroughly enjoyed designing and creating book covers for this project, even though it was very time consuming. The project seemed like it would go on for a good while without ceasing even as we worked on it. I worry about some of the type, specifically Taming of the Shrew, and whether or not it reads as shrew or not. Other than that, I am pretty happy with the results of this project.

Organized Chaos

Once I had decided upon design ideas for the book covers, I began the process of actually creating the covers. I went to Hobby Lobby to buy some paper and things and probably went a little overboard. As I realized that I had too many ideas of what I could do, I began to cut down and focus on the essential aspects of the designs. I wanted to create a vintage feel to the books, while keeping with the modern look. To create the sense of a series of books, I kept all the back cover and spine layouts the same while I modified the front imagery, text, and overall colors to make each book unique. With all of the individual letters, I hand cut them with an X-Acto knife so that I did not have a background. I had fun using vellum paper in varying colors to add a sense of depth to the covers so that they were not all flat colors.

     Here are some examples of the covers as they were during the process:

As I continued on with the project, I spread out all my stuff as usual, and had a very messy workspace. This picture is only a small portion of the messiness, but messy workspaces are what I need. 

Modern Shakespeare

As soon as I learned that our class was to create modern book covers for Shakespearean plays, I grew instantly excited. I knew that my scrapbooking skills would come in handy, as well as help me create effective book covers. I gravitated towards the two Shakespearean plays that I had already read (Othello and King Lear) and chose Taming of the Shrew because of the movie 10 Things I Hate About You. A silly reason, I know, but I at least had an idea of the plot of the play.

Once I decided upon which plays to create the covers for, I started sketching out some ideas for the covers using the symbolism embedded in the stories. My favorite quote from Othello is the quote on the back of the cover. I wanted to take the imagery associated with that quote and use that for the front cover. The play of Othello centers on the character Othello and how his love turns to jealousy very quickly and ends in violence for all included. With Taming of the Shrew, I played around with ideas of a woman in chains or marriage, and eventually thought of drawing an actual shrew and having a chained tied to it to symbolize the constricting bonds of marriage in the play. For King Lear, I took the idea of King Lear splitting his kingdom into three, and how that was supposed to be the best solution for the kingdom.

At this point in time, I didn't realize how small one half of an inch was...Needless to say the spines were changed around a bit...

Westerville Music and Arts Festival

Our second project instructed the class to create and identity for the annual Westerville Music and Arts Festival. We needed to make a logo, poster and t-shirt design that highlighted the fine arts side of the festival, while still display the other aspects of the festival. I began with a few sketches of random things associated with music and with arts separately, such as different instruments, staffs, music notes, and paint brushes, paint, palettes, and other such things. I struggled putting the two subjects together, but eventually created three different logo possibilities.

 

The first option had several elements that I liked such as the red box working as a container and a text, but I felt like the logo still needed work with all the extra negative space and how the "Westerville Area Chamber of Commerce" stuck out and did not flow with the rest of the logo. the second and third options had more promise, but I decided upon the second option. I changed a few elements after I scanned the image in by taking the idea of a container holding the text from the first logo and making the logo only have two fonts instead of three. 

This logo uses a hand drawn font for the word "Arts" and Century Gothic for the other words. The sans serif, more streamlined font of Century Gothic helped provide contrast  for "Arts", allowing it to stand out as the most important elements of the logo and the festival itself. I chose the colors for their brightness and contrast against each other. Combined with the brown of the background, the three colors provide a warm, fun, summer feel that embodies the time and purpose of the festival. I then created a black and white version of the logo to cater to the needs of the client.

Now that the logo was done, I could move on to the poster and t-shirt designs. After throwing out a first attempt at a poster, I reverted back to one of the first sketches I'd done for the project, which looked more like poster designs than logos anyway. This design feature half of an instrument and half of a paint palette. I adapted that to fit the paintbrush and violin of my logo. I kept the design for the poster fairly simple and used a serif font Baskerville Old Face to provide contrast against the Century Gothic font of the rest of the poster.

I was not sure how to tackle the t-shirt design at first seeing as I had several options. I could have used my logo and simply added the extra bits of information needed, or I could take parts of the logo, or use more of the poster design. I ended up deciding on using the text from the logo and add the rest of the information using Century Gothic once again. I made the text white with the turquoise color as a possible t-shirt color. The client wanted bright colors and this color would be perfect for standing out in a crowd. The design could also be placed on a tye-dye shirt as the client wanted, with the font in the white to contrast the tye-dye.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with the end results of the project. I think I have successfully highlighted the arts aspect of the festival as well as the fun feel of the event.