Penguin Book Cover Feedback- Class Crit / Evaluation

Imaginative concept and original interpretation of the brief 

It's clear the preferred book design is this cover with Tom Robinson which is also my favourite design as it seems most fitting to the brief, somebody mentioned however that the line coming from his eye which is supposed to be representative of a tear drop is "ambiguous and confusing". Having deleted it I think it does look better.

Competently executed with strong use of typography 

It was also noted I should smooth out the cut out on photoshop, I'd initially made this purposely messy to symbolise the roughness of injustice and sloppy handling of the court case however looking at it now it does just appear to look like a mistake, I shall rectify this. The same person however noted that I had "very good use of type/ image with contemporary appearance." It was also noted I should move around the typography so that on the cover the 'A' is further down and on the back cover the text should be moved further away from the image. I initially quite liked the idea of the typography coming out of the head however realise now it effects legibility and looks chaotic.

Appeal to a contemporary readership 

This therefore matches the brief for suiting it to a new wave of readers as it's been noted my typography and collaged imagery is contemporary.

"The design with Tom on it is the strongest and most impactful and relates to the focus of the book. The back typography needs to be further away from the image. On the front the typography could be more diagonal."

It was noted my decreasing the textural effect on the feathered hand drawn book design it may look more contemporary, while the imagery of the other design appears modern as it's collaged out of it's traditional context.

Good understanding of the marketplace

"It remains quite a serious design as it's a classical book due to the nature of the subject" so is in keeping and relevantly designed with the marketplace. Someone asked for a higher resolution image of Tom Robinson however I feel this would subtract from the merge of tradition with contemporary as this image is taken from the original film and I feel enraptures the concept of old thought patterns and segregation. The typography I feel is what makes this cover particularly modern but remains understanding of the market place with the inclusion of an original film image.


Have a point of difference from the many other book covers it is competing against

On the other book cover design it's been commented that on the back of the book the text is too large and needs to be broken up, possibly into columns. I asked people if it was clear the image on the front was drawings of feathers as the image trace I used blurred the lines, which although I do like as I enhanced the texture; I was concerned it was unclear. People noted it was initially unclear, one person thought "it looks like they were twigs at first". This proves however that I have moved away from the typical use of the symbolic mockingbird, as I have done with the other book cover design as often they stray away from the main topic, this may highlight a shift away from racial segregation and development of equality.



On reflection I've decided not to alter my final design (the Tom Robinson design) to make it cleaner cut in terms on neatening up my photoshop collage as this is the way I intended it. To avoid copyright infringements however I plan to experiment with altering the image more, with image tracing and or drawing the image roughly in photoshop as I feel this is more my style. I furthermore like how the typography appears to be coming out of the side of his face so won't be altering the spacing.







This is my final design. I aligned the design to fit within the guidelines which I hadn't originally and intensified the drawing over the photography as I felt this works really well, representing the chaos the Tom Robinson trial creates, as well as being symbolic of mental chains enforced on him through the injustice of segregation.