Penguin Book Cover Competition

Tuesday 18th – Introduction and Research

The task is to design a book cover for our chosen book within the strict guide lines Penguin has supplied to enter their competition.

Before today I looked into the book covers existing for Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything.’ There are the 5 main covers that has been used as well as I believe someone else’s work found on a simple google search. Also knowing Bryson was a well established author I looked into other covers created. These all either seemed over light hearted or like extremely heavy school text book. Neither of which would appeal to the masses that the book is aimed to.

Within groups we thought about key themes that are in the book and having listened to a fair chunk on audio it was easy to state the main subjects. We then looked at the classic imagery we would assume that would link to the book – making sure we knew reasons not to use something or invent the idea in a creative new way.

I then looked into what concepts I wanted to take forward. Energy, growth and movement were the key factors I wanted to explore. I thought about stars and explosions in space as that is where the book begins.