My Chosen Book

After initially leaning towards 'What A Carve Up!', I've decided to design a cover for 'The Outsiders'. I read a lot of each book, but 'The Outsiders' provoked a lot more ideas in my mind. Whilst reading I could not help but jot down a lot of ideas. With 'What A Carve Up' I found it very hard to get into. I was drawn to it at first as I knew it followed similar themes to my favourite book, '1984' by George Orwell - politics - but upon reading it was very difficult to visualise ideas for it. 

'The Outsiders' is a teenage rebellion book that focuses on the separate of people based on their class and social group - the greasers and the socs. There is a lot of violence involved - in particular a use of "switchblades" (essentially flip-knives) and murders and death do take place. The characters are young too - as young as 14 - and I felt a combination of their age and serious subjects like murder and social class could allow me to create an interesting book cover.

Initial Ideas

• A water fountain. The first "death" and the only murder is featured at a water fountain in a park. I could replace the water of the fountain with blood. This would create quite an interesting but slightly gruesome feel. The red would be very deep and not very discreet - very bright. A typical blood colour. The fountain would be of an old fashioned style, in a park that somehow portrayed the location - America. I could do this through road signs or the buildings that could surround the fountain.
• Simply featuring a switchblade. Perhaps covered in blood.
• The outline of a switchblade in a pool of blood.
• A newspaper article as the front cover, wrapping around the entire book. The newspaper communicates that the story is shocking enough for a newspaper to report it, or suggests that a newspaper is present and relevant to the story. The "main article" on the newspaper would be the title of the book and the authors name, with an image below that relates to the story. Surrounding articles would feature words that give clues to the book - "Murder", "fire", "church", "gangs", "teens".
• A comparison of Greasers & Socs. E.g. the page is divided by the centre lines of a road, and on either side is an item specific to each group - a mustang on one side, a souped up car on the other.
• Play on a line in the book "The sun sets on the east side too", when Ponyboy (a Greaser) explains to Cherry (a Soc) that he's just the same as her. A sunset, some silhouettes, similar idea to showing the divide between Socs & Greasers.
• A fence - a metaphor for the divide between Socs & Greasers.
• Graffiti, play on the "rebellion" of the teenagers.