Penguin Design Awards 2012 Entry: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The brief this year was to create a cover design for Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (which is probably more famous for the Jack Nicholson film adaptation). I tried to make the title of the book the main focus of my design as people are probably more familiar with the novel than with Ken Kesey the author.
The text is meant to resemble a stamp, and the images in the background are based on Rorschach tests, but I tried to make them more obviously resemble faces than just blobs.

The Penguin Design Awards competition is open until the 19th of April and you can enter it here. Tweet

The Master and Margarita: Two Day Book Project

This week we were set a two day book project by visiting illustrator Maureen Valfort to create book spreads and a cover combining our existing illustrations with type. These are the spreads we were asked to create using digital type, I tried to pick extracts from the novel The Master and Margarita that fitted well with the images.

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Some More People of Moscow

These are a continuation of me studying the photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson for research. I've tried to make them a bit looser and done the ink blob portraits thing that is a bit of an illustration student staple, but I've tried to make it my own.

This second set is a bit more of a worked up version of the faces, but I'm not sure if I prefer the simpler ones.
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The People of Moscow

As part of my project based on The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, I've been looking at some of Henri Cartier-Bresson's amazing street photography, in particular the from the book The People of Moscow. The portraits I've been drawing in response to the photos have started to shape the style of my project so I thought I'd post them up here to give an idea of what I'm up to.

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Obsession Project Work: Edgar Allen Poe - 'The Lake'

These were designed to illustrate Edgar Allen Poe's poem The Lake. The landscapes are based on the countryside in the Yorkshire Dales. Eventually some of these are going to be incorporated into a concertina book, but at the moment, they are quite initial and I will probably work them up to give a bit more contrast.
(They aren't really that red, that's my awful scanner.)
The Lake

In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody-
Then-ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight-
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define-
Nor Love-although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining-
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.

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UPDATED - Penguin Design Award: One Hundred Years of Solitude Book Cover

This is the final design for One Hundred Years of Solitude, submitted for the Penguin Design Award. I tinkered around with the background a bit, and added some enlarged elements from the pattern.

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Penguin Design Award: One Hundred Years of Solitude Book Cover

*Please see updated bookcover design here*

This is my current design for the Penguin Design Award for Gabriel García Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. I picked up on the idea of the Golden Fish as a motif in the story. The background is done in watercolour, taking inspiration from portugese painted tiles.

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Political Mutation and Evolution: Artists Book Project

This was an elective project in the first year of Illustration. We were given the theme of mutation and I chose to look at social and political change as a more focused subject.

The text I used for the book was created using words taken from an essay on the Civil Rights Movement, which I rearranged to give a new meaning. These were accompanied by mark making images that were meant to give an abstract representation of the text. The book form itself took inspiration from the terms convergent/parallel evolution and was designed so it was only possible to view one half of the book at once.

The finished book (I tried to give an idea of the book and how it works so I hope it makes sense):





































Some sample pages from the book:

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John Steinbeck's Johnny Bear, Book Cover Project

This and the following posts are (probably) all going to be from my degree course in Illustration at UCA Maidstone.

This was the first project we were set in our first year. We were asked to design a book cover for John Steinbeck's short story Johnny Bear. I chose a grammarphone as the cover illustration as it fitted in with the period of the book and also the character Johnny Bear speaks through repeating snippets of conversations he has heard around the town.
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College Project 5: American Gods

This was done as a response to our AS Fine Art final project at Leeds College of Art with the theme of Links and Connection. I ended up doing a book cover project for Neil Gaiman's book American Gods. I came up with two concepts for the cover, based on two separate sections of the book.

The first, was based on a section of the book where one of the New Gods appears in the form of Lucille Ball from I Love Lucy starts speaking to the main character, Shadow.





















The second concept, which became my final piece, is a more abstract idea of Shadow, and his journey through the novel.

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