Echo & Narcissus

I wanted to research some book illustrators and designers for some more inspiration for my final book cover. I really liked a few from the reference list on the brief for this project.

One of my favourites was Julie Mehretu who makes these really beautiful large scale designs. She has a really unique style of working with collage, different line weights and colours. I really like how her work almost tells a story and has a sense of pace and time which I think would work really well for a book cover design.

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I also really liked some of the work from the Garden and Cosmos exhibition. I loved how the artist has focused on the detail of the drawings and has placed them on bright coloured or lightly patterned backgrounds. I feel that these designs are more relevant to the style I prefer to work/draw in.

I could maybe create a mood-board of colours that would work for Echo and Narcissus. I'd like to think about this kind of style where I'd have quite a simple background using these colours and focus on the key points in detailed drawings.

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I was also really inspired by Hilma Af Klint's work. Her illustrations are very abstract, using muted shades of various colours and different geometric shapes. Similar to the Garden and Cosmos work, she tends to focus on the different shapes and marks and leaves the background one colour. I prefer this approach because she doesn't necessarily depict a recognisable image but instead focuses on  symbols, shapes and colours to show the viewer what her work is about.

PLAN:

I want my book cover to be quite minimal, focusing on shapes and colours as oppose to more traditional drawings of characters/props from the novel.

- Pick one or two most important parts of the E&N story and jot down some keywords.
- Experiment with different colours to portray different moods/emotions.
- Play around with collage and make some examples of what the final book cover could look like.