OUGD503 Studio Brief 1 Penguin Design Awards - Development

OUGD503 Studio Brief 1 Penguin Design Awards - Development

For my concept, as a lot of Chick Lit covers uses illustrative elements, I decided I wanted to use illustrations of a cup of tea, some ginger nuts and a hand holding the list. This sets the scene of a woman checking her list while having a brew and a snack and adds a element of humour as its ironic as the woman is eating the ginger nuts while reading her lists which states she no longer does. I feel this is successful as the humorous element and scene is very relatable to women making it 'pickupable' and the humorous element clearly shows that its an entertaining book. 

I asked my housemate (an Illustrator) to draw the three objects and had her permission to use them for my cover. As I knew her work, I knew her style would be fitting for the illustrations and am very happy with the final outcomes.

Illustrations - 

I wanted quite gender neutral colours to achieve my aim of a toned down Chick Lit cover. As the illustrations are quite gentle and uses warm colours, I tried a few different colours and felt beige worked best for the background. This enhances the scene within the illustration and emits a homely, warm, familiar feel to the audiences. The use of orange for the typography is also used to compliment the ginger nuts, but allows the cover to feed the eye around the cover for its viewers. Furthermore, different arrangements were tested for the cover as balance is very important along with also directing the eye around the cover.

From research I found that all of Cailtlin Moran's books use the same type and arrangement for the design of the authors name. Therefore I wanted to stick with this as it would be recognisable to the authors readers and adhere's to Moran's previous books. For the title itself, choosing the right typography was hard as I wanted it to be a script font to use similar conventions to Chick Lit covers but without being overly decorative. In the end I found 'Felt Tip Woman' on typekit which I believe works well, as it isn't overly decorative but still quite calligraphic and targets women. As the type looks hand rendered, it also adds a more raw, sincere quality to the cover which compliments the illustration, This together creates more of a genuine cover that will appeal to women.  

Final Outcome -