Final Penguin books in context

Final Designs

Below are the finial designs for the jacket covers. I decided to quickly extend the brief and do three variations of the jacket covers so they all worked as a set. I was very pleased with the designs and i had managed to combine my illustration style with editorial work which is something i was fairly dubious about before.

Skin shots

Below is the final layout which i have chosen to stick with. It is by far the most effective and the text works well with the image.



Instead of having just a plain white background i thought it would be a nice and effective idea to incorporate flesh as the background colour of the book. I set out to do this by taking initial skin shots of models backs to get a large surface areas of skin and in detail. I then trialed positioned this as the background of the jacket placing the hands over the tops.

This as you can see below was not very successful and didn't not have the effect which i hoped for. I detracted from the hands and removed the clinical feeling as for the skins dents and body hair to show up the transparcy had to be 100% which was far too dark.

Hand arrangments

Above still playing around with layout designs, however the above is by far the most affective. With the hands stretching over the base and top of the jacket it conveys the greed and rush very effectively.

Layout designs

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Tinting the hand colouring to a halftone of a muddy blood red, this keeps the theme minimal and sinister but also suggests the story line involves murder.

The typeface which i found my appt to use what the one above, a formal typeface which i thought helped to convey the elegance of the title, a perfume which would naturally instantly connote beauty and femininity. It is strong and old fashioned representing the time in which the story has been set.

Quick layout designs

I sketched some initial designs down and had a quick play around with colour ways on paper. as this brief was only a 5 day brief i decided to stick to only the colours of red black and white. Keeping ti minimal and fairly clinical and sinister which helped convey the theme and darker side of the story to a reader who maybe hadn't read the book before or knew the story.



The block of red colour below was meant represent the curve of a woman's body and her death in order to create the perfume - hence it is blood red to covey the blood shed. However i did not think that this idea was very successful and i wanted the design to be even more minimal and cryptic to entice the viewer.

Perfume breif

This was a quick turn around brief to help me focus on my editorial and layout design with text. I chose this brief as it would allow me to use indesign and develop these software skills and combine both my hand rendered image style with a big body of text.

It was to design a jacket cover for Patrick Suskinds Perfume. I have read the book and seen the film and the book is by far much more disturbing and graphic. I wanted to focus on a design for the jacket which was not obvious following the normal trends and cover designs for past penguin books which focus on the nose for the sense of smell and the curves of a woman's body. i wanted to represent the book a different way, nitty and gritty conveys the greed and overwhelming desire and need to have this perfume.



I started out on the theme of greed and desperataion by taking a series of photos of hands against a white backdrop grabbing and reaching out - as though for the perfume. I then layered them over one another to convey the rush, and pressure of the peoples desire for grab hold and have the perfume.