Penguin Book Covers - Layouts

Book Sleeve Layout

Based on Marbers Grid the layout has been rotated in different ways with elements adapted to fit the grid.

Marbers Grid

To create a cohesive style across the three book sleeves the layouts and elements were similarly placed. Using the images to fill the background of the covers allowed the detail of the textures to be best seen. To reflect each book a symbol was chosen to be placed on top of the imagery, this would act as a representation of an aspect of the blurb or a word that was defined during research.

Colouring the symbols so that they were white, made them stand out against the high contrast imagery behind and white was also not similar to any of the other colours used in the photographs, increasing its clarity.

The band where all the book information would be placed was coloured black as this best complemented the high contrast black in the images. Using white text over this mirrored the colour used for the symbols. Using a swatch from the image to use for the authors name was also effective as this then created a link between the text and image.

Creating bands for the text were much more effective then geometric shapes as these detracted from the images below and looked a little disjointed. Bands that ran vertically or horizontally allowed enough space for all the information to be placed within them. However the vertical bands used up quite a lot of background space making it hard to place the symbols in the space remaining. Horizontal bands allowed for a greater amount of background space meaning balance could be created between elements.  

Layouts with large symbols detracted from the image behind and overpowered the rest of the layout.