Thinking about communicating a message

I reached a point in the design of my front cover where I felt as if I were finished - all of the required info was on the page and I had designed pretty much exactly what I had drawn on paper - but I wasn't comfortable with the strength of the message my cover was giving off, and the root of the problem was the background I had chosen.

The most difficult part of this project has not been the intricate detail I went into on my attempt to get the newspaper looking some-what realistic, it's been choosing a suitable background to both fits in with my neutral, retro, colour scheme but does not clash with the very prominent grey fencing and features imagery that can be seen on my design (does not fall behind the newspaper). I originally settled for the following picture:

I was drawn to this picture as the positioning of a fence in front of it would look reasonably realistic, and because of the car. I could envision how I could position it - have the car just below the newspaper, positioned off centre. The thought of having a car on the front cover meant it would relate to the book slightly.

After I imported this image, I saw another.

The shape of the sign on the right hand side is something typically American, and I knew that if I featured on the front of the cover it would communicate the idea of "America" and therefore give the audience a clue on where the book was set. So I tried importing this image as my background. I didn't really like it. I wasn't a fan of the colours, and in order to position the sign where I wanted it I had to enlarge and reposition it so much the rest of the image didn't look right - as my intentions were to have it wrap around the entire cover. 

I went back to the first, and applied a quick image trace to it. The look this gave was something I really liked, so I decided to run with it. I applied an image trace to the second image, which turned it into a vector, and pinched the sign from it and placed it into the first, next to the car. I then created a quick shadow to match the car and turn it to a colour that suited. This is what the result was:

So I settled for this for a while.

Once I reached the point where I thought I was finished, I decided that it was the background holding it back from being a successful cover that portrays the message of the book. The background was giving off the vibe that the outsiders was set in dirt tracks, dusty roads, in the middle of nowhere etc, which is not the case. Whilst the American sign and the car give clues to the country it's set in, it became a toss up between communicating the location of the book or the theme of the book. Yes, I had a knife in the centre of the page, but I didn't think this communicated the idea of "gang culture" strong enough. I thought about where gangs are usually set - and where the Outsiders is set, in Tulsa, and decided to try a city-scape scene. 

I found a 1960's skyline, and used the pen tool to trace it. 

After this I adjusted the size of some of the towers and applied the "roughen" effect to it. This makes straight lines slightly uneven, and matches the rest of my design (this effect is also applied to the logo, the newspaper, the lines on the newspaper etc). 

I really did like the colouring of the sky of the background I had originally settled for, so I decided to stick with it. 

The city scape obviously communicates a big-city vibe, so combined with the knife in the logo it strengthens the message of Gangs and gang culture. Then, with the fencing in front, it suggests an idea of those that are "the outsiders" are divided from the bigger city/the rest of the society, and that a gang culture is part of the reason of this. 

This city-scape also wraps around the entire book, so the back cover does not look as plain as it was before and gives the design a more complete feeling. 

Developing the Newspaper

Without a doubt, the most difficult, complex and frustrating part of my design was getting the right look for my newspaper. Below shows how the newspaper developed over time, and explanations on some techniques I used and the reasons behind my decisions.

Once I got to this point, I was stuck. I loved the layout of the newspaper and how the title and the blurb were incorporated, but hated the attempted "rip" effect around the edges. It just didn't look believable, and no amount of drop shadowing or "crumbled paper" textures were going to make it look realistic. So, I started again. I drew out my initial shape on a new document.

I thought about how a piece of paper tears - how it's not perfect, not in a straight line etc.

After this I thought about what sort of feel I wanted my newspaper to have - old, weathered, battered, ruined in the weather, in a run-down environment. A piece of paper blowing in the wind and rain does not stay perfectly flat( especially a piece of ripped paper) -  paper naturally curls when it's wet. So I designed some page curls. 

I decided to go further, and design in some tears within the actual paper. They can represent bullet holes, and this adds another layer of a sense of danger for the person viewing the cover.

The idea of being able to see through the paper and see the fence and background adds another sense of depth to the design, adding to the realism.

Next up was textures. 

Torn paper texture, destroyed paper texture.

I really feel that the added paper folds and tears has helped strengthen the destroyed/battered feeling that my design needs to give off. The textured also age the newspaper, which helps me portray the era the book is set in too (not specifically, just the it is not current-day).

Further Logo Development

I was becoming really stuck for the design of my logo. The initial idea I had sounded quite good in my mind, but when I drew it out it didn't really work - the shapes weren't working together, and I hadn't properly thought about where all of the relevant text was going to go or how I'd incorporate other aspects of the design.

Also, I knew that it wasn't actually necessary for me to have a "logo" - I could just write the title of the book - but I still loved the idea of having a gang stamp/logo across a newspaper article, as if it had been defaced. In this way I can actually make a point out of the title and use it to strengthen a message. 

I went back to the "drawing board". 

Firstly, I drew some initial sketches with my graphics tablet onto Illustrator. I like doing this, as I can work with the design straight away and quickly experiment with colours. These are my initial drawings. 

Once I had sketched these, I was drawn towards numbers 2 and 3, so started to experiment and develop them properly. Here are some screenshots documenting how I experimented and came to the final logo design. 

1                                                      2

With the first design on the left, I wasn't happy with how uneven the words on either side of the knife were - how the word "outsiders" is so much longer than "the" and how in order to position "s.e hinton" centrally, it meant the H of 'hinton" lined up with the edge of the knife. I think it looks awkward. Also, I didn't like the size of no. 2. I spreads out too much, and is too unlike a stamp. With "the outsiders" spread onto 2 lines compared to just 1 for the author name, it again looks awkward and does nothing to lead your eye or cause any interest. 

3

I preferred this to the previous 2. The text works better along the length of the blade.

4

The positioning of the text is better in this one. It's stacked widest to smallest, and this pattern is continued to the bottom of the knife. It still doesn't resembled a stamp. Stamps are usually solid shapes - squares, circles or triangles. This is where I started to steer towards that.

5                                                        6

First experiments with circles. I liked both - especially the sharp edges of the circle. They match the slight uneven-ness of the knife. For this I used the "roughen" tool in illustrator. No.5 is supposed to represent a blood pool, but I didn't think this worked as strong as I'd have liked it to. 

7                                               8 

Bringing in text. I chose this font as I thought it matched the rugged/uneven-ness of circle and knife, and tried positioning it within the circle. My main problem was trying to make it look even, but still readable. I used a previous idea of putting the text within the knife to "fill the gap", but then I thought it took too much away from the knife, and, specifically No.7, you couldn't tell as easily it was a knife. I decided to remove the author name, and see if I could fit in later, or elsewhere in my book cover design. 

Flipping the knife upside seemed to work stronger. It comes across as more aggressive and dangerous.

9

Changing the font strengthened the design. Its similar to an actually stamp. The boldness and all caps meant it was very easy to read, and I thought that what was restricting me from creating an even logo was the very uneven, slightly random font. Also, tilting the knife seemed to give off more of "edgy" "dangerous" vibe. As if it's sliced across the circle, kind of as if it's being used. 

10

This is the current final logo. I'm not totally sold on the positioning of the authors name. "S.E" is very short word compared to "Hinton" but it made most sense to me to put them either side of the blade as if they have been cut through.

My colour choices are based on what red connotes - danger, blood etc - and what I want to be read first. The red is the brightest colour on the page, as I am keeping everything else on the cover rather muted, so the viewers eye shall naturally be drawn to the knife. I decided to keep the book title in plain dark grey/black as it's positioning through the middle of the knife and through the sides of the circle means it is easily seen.

The black is not a pure black. It has a slight hint of white in it, to very slightly tone it down. The same goes for the red. This will help me create a vintage/retro feel on my cover, which is an idea I am definitely sticking to and considering when designing. 

Background Experiments

I am finding what to feature in the background, behind the fence, on my book cover quite tricky. So, I decided to just see what colours/imagery may work, and experiment with a few different images behind it.

The idea of featuring just black and white imagery, and then using red as the colour that pops and highlights important things (e.g. in the logo, the title, the blurb) seems like it may work, So I may experiment further with that. 

My aims for the "background" is to convey the location and the era the book is set in. Because of this, I am also drawn to the very first example - with the typical american sign in its recognisable shape. If I went with this, I'd want the sign to be in a very run down, "desolate" looking area, to really convey the Greasers and the part of town they live in. I don't want to show anything too built up - e.g. a majorly fancy skyline - because it will communicate the wrong ideas about the book.

I could also run with the idea of featuring a sunset, as they are something spoken about and focused on in the book. But, I'm concerned that showing a sunset can soften the mood and will detract from the idea of violence etc that I am trying to portray. 

Another thing I need to consider is the colour of the background and how it works with the grey fencing. The fencing is a grey, and there's a lot of it, and there seems to be a fine line between shades of a colour that do and do not work with grey. I do not want to highlight the grey too much, but at the same time I do not want it to merge with the background too much as it becomes confusing and not very pleasing to look at. 

Further Design Development

Since my last post I've developed my design a lot further in Illustrator.

I started to work further on the newspaper article aspect of the design, so I started with drawing lines where I wanted to simulate text for the articles.

The reason I have chosen to draw lines rather than write in fully fledged articles is because I do not want to overwhelm the page with too much text. I am slightly concerned with, though, the amount of the lines there are going to be on the page - what with the fencing in the background too - so at this point I started to consider their opacity and how prominent that are on the page. I want them to be obvious and look realistic, but not too much so they clash with other parts of the design. 

Whilst it's not too easy to see it in the small screen-cap, I made a decision to not make every single line the exact same length. I did this because I felt having each line start and end at the exact same point made it look as if there were just a perfect rectangle of lines placed on the page, and by very slightly offsetting them it made the design look a bit better and more true to a newspaper. 

Penguin provided the text that needed to be featured on the back of the book for the blurb. Because of my newspaper idea, it made sense to me and looked good to fit the blurb within the newspaper as if it were an actual article. I decided not to align and format it like the surrounding articles, and use colour to make it much easier to read. I chose red as it will match what I am going to feature on the front cover, as well as red having certain connotations (e.g. violence, blood etc).

All of the lines that I drew for the article are just created with the line tool on Illustrator, so are very easy to manipulate and change the shape of. Again, to create more of a realistic feel, I decided to simulate each individual word with the lines. I felt like it broke up the page a bit more and preferred the look of it. 

The article is at a slight angle as I wanted to make it look slightly offset and "edgy" on the angle, as if the paper had been ripped in a carefree way. You can see in the above screen cap how it will wrap around the entire book, over the spine. The addition of a paper texture over the article is an attempt to give it another aspect of realism, although I would like to add more prominent tears, rips and page curls to strengthen the idea of the paper being slightly ruined/destroyed. 

This is as far as I've got so far for where the book title is going to be featured. I started to experiment with the idea of a logo that is stamped over the top of the article, but I'm struggling on how I'm going to convey all the messages I want to in it. I want to include a knife, as I like the feeling that it will portray and I have an idea to have the only colour aspect of the front cover to be the red blood on the knife. 

I like the look of the slightly jagged edged circle, and want to develop this further. I'm really inspired by the retro logos that I researched in a previous post, specifically the ones below. 

Above is what the design looks like so far, without a background. I really like my use of red so far, and I want to incorporate it further on the front cover. 

Presenting My Idea

A Mock Up

This is the Mock Up that I'm going to share in my presentation.

The lines around the mock-up logo simulate where the newspaper article is going to be. I need to look further into and experiment more with how that is going to appear. I have a general gist of hows it's going to look, but am yet to try and design that aspect. I do not want it to look too overwhelming, especially with too much text - my idea is to feature words from the "surrounding" newspaper articles, that relate to the story - e.g. "fire", "gang", "church"  - so they appear as separate "articles" on the newspaper that the Greasers have tagged with their logo.

The font choice on this mock-up is quite good, and I like how it sides on the spine (in particular "The Outsiders" over the paper, in the middle). I'm a bit concerned at the clarity of the authors name at the tope, and whether it clashes too much with the fence pattern in the background. I think I'm going to experiment further with the background colour on the spine, or add some more shapes. The spine itself needs to be interesting enough to attract attention, as sometimes that's all that can be seen when the book is sat on the shelf, so I definitely need to think about this further.

A cloudy, moonlike background - I am not sure about this. I'm not sure if its relevant enough to the story, and I need to consider further what it connotes and if I can design something that has a strong message and relevance to the story. Perhaps a sunset? Sunsets are mentioned quite a lot in the book. To enhance the feel of the era the book is set in, as well as the location, I would like to experiment with the idea of silhouettes of buildings/road signs in the background and see how this looks. One idea of having a burning church in the background, behind the fence, would communicate an idea of violence and a relevance to churches in the book.

I need to consider where I am going to put the tagline (provided by Penguin Books) on the front cover. My initial thought is to incorporate it into the text that will surround the logo. Or, I could create another piece of ripped paper that's attached to the fence underneath, with it written on.

The Logo: First Attempt

I've created a very initial design for the badge that is going to act as 'The Outsiders' tag and title. It's taken from drawings that I did in my sketchbook when I was first experimenting with ideas.

These are very initial, early designs of the switchblade. I definitely need to develop them further but they act as examples of what's going to there. These are just based off of pictures I saw of switchblades online.

My strongest idea for the logo is having blood smear across as the switchblade is being "switched" (opened). So, I started by just drawing a shape where the blood is going to be.

After this I decided I wanted to simplify the design a bit, considering the research I've done on retro graphic design. I turned the knife into a silhouette, and then thought about how I could strengthen the viewers understanding of it without making the design too complex. I added a blood "shape" on the knife. I coloured it grey, because I wasn't sure about using the same red, but I still need to develop and experiment further with the colours on this logo. This is just very early experimentations. 

Once I had got to this point, I wanted to develop the blood 'smear' further, as it wasn't looking like one...I used the same tool that I used to create the ripped paper effect - the 'wrinkle' tool. 

To get an idea of how I could position the text inside the logo, I added some in a specific font. I like this font as it mimics the "smeared" look, but I have not made any concrete decisions on which one I am going to use - nor the colours. 

I want to look closer at retro badges/logos again, as I do not feel that this has a strong enough retro feel. This is just one of the possible ways I could design the title of the book, too, and I will experiment further with it. 

Initial Designs

I've been experimenting on Illustrator creating some initial designs for my book cover. These give me a basis to work from, and from these I'm getting more of an idea on what does/what does not work with my design.

Fencing
The first element I started to design was the fence that will spread across the entire book - it will wrap around both the front and back cover.

To design it I used a bitmap image of a real fence. I of course know what these sorts of fences look like...but I needed to try and work out how each piece of the fence overlapped one-another to get a realistic looking fence. 

At this point I don't have a concrete decision on what's going to be behind the fence. So I've been experimenting with putting different colours behind it to see what works/doesn't work. Due to the colour of the fencing - 2 different shades of grey - I'm going to have to consider carefully what I put behind. Whilst I can always change the colour of the fencing, I don't want it to look too unrealistic. Some colours clash heavily with the grey - especially since the pattern of the fence is quite prominent and covers such a large part of the page. 

Ripped Newspaper

Next up was the ripped newspaper. This was quite difficult, as trying to create a "natural" looking rip for the paper kept ending up looking rather unnatural - either not random/too random tears etc. I ended up using a tool called the "wrinkle" tool, which produced a randomised 'wrinkle' in each line and is easily controlled and changeable too. 

After I created the shape of the paper, I decided to try and experiment with the texture of it. A plain, block of colour did not realistic, and through my research I noted how a lot of retro designs rely heavily on good, well chosen textures. I used the "grain" effect with a "speckle" to create a very light texture, and made the colour an off-white. 

I added a small white stroke to the 'paper', as well as a drop shadow. I then added some holes and some 'hooks' where the paper will be attached to the fencing. Below is an example of how that works across the entire book cover, with a dark blue background.