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.