Graphic Systems

      I decided to choose Ian McEwan from the list of authors as I know his books well.  Having read his books I realised that there is a strong theme of relationships running through them.  McEwan’s books are generally targetted towards a broad adult audience of both men and women.  As I have read and enjoyed several of his novels I decided to direct the cover designs at a younger audience, mid twenties to early thirties.

  I wanted to aim the book covers at a younger audience than McEwan’s current covers which are photography based designs, which I feel look tired and dull. Using brighter colours and simple uncluttered designs will make them more eye catching and appealling to a new readership.

I decided to use the important events in each story and create these as simplistically as possible in Illustrator.  Rather than using the images of people I used silhouettes as I felt the magic of a book is for the reader to make the images for themselves.

The fonts I made using circles in Illustrator  looked much more integrated with the image and more interesting than conventional typefaces.  Looking at books in bookshops I realised the book spine is particularly important as this is constantly on show.  I tried to integrate the back and spine with the front cover design to make the image flow across.  

  I have used a different colour scheme for each book relating to the storyline.  In terms of a graphic system I tried to stick as closely as I could to a frame, placing the text centrally.  However, in some cases I did need to adapt the frame to fit with the image although I do not feel that this  removes them from the Graphic System.