Chosen Book!

Why i chose The Outsiders


After starting the project we had two choices of books we could design a book cover for which were The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, which is about rebellion and gang crime with between two different groups which are Greasers and Socs. The other book is called What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe which is a novel that has multiple narratives and themes relating to money, greed, politics etc.

I looked up these books and began doing background research into the books and the authors whilst brainstorming and getting ideas out in my sketchbook.  I started reading The Outsiders and developed ideas and possible sketches for book cover designs in my sketchbook so i could leak out ideas i had onto paper as i got through the story and then finished reading the book. Once i had red the book i continued to brainstorm and sketch out more multiple ideas that i had. After doing a lot of brainstorming and sketches for the book i wondered why i can't just do this one instead of reading the other book and wasting time, so i decided to just stick with developing more ideas for The Outsiders rather than What a Carve Up! as well.

The reason why i decided to drop reading What a Carve up! is mainly because i already developed ideas and had a keen interest in The Outsiders after just reading it and didn't want to waste time reading another book if i knew i wasn't going to pick it. What put me off that book was after doing brief research into the story and what themes etc are contained within it, it made me question myself into if i would like it or not because to me it seemed more of a complex story, with multiple narratives and perspectives and seemed too complex which is what also put me off reading the book.

I chose to do The Outsiders to design my book cover is because i enjoyed the book and the storyline and the themes of rebellion, gang crime and the characters etc. The plot has some strong specific moments in scenes that would be good to use for ideas in designing a book cover as well as objects that would also be good into designing for cover as well. So overall its mainly because there's a lot more content and ideas i have from this book rather than the other one.


Ideas for cover design 

Some of my initial ideas currently are potentially using specific elements and objects from the book and making a pattern design across the whole cover in a doodle design as if its been drawn in a school book or something. So objects like cigarettes, knife, guns, rings, combs, popcorn, coke bottle, cherry, candy bar etc. which relates to the to the story in someway or another. The colours would be red, light blue and white for the outline of the doodles with a black background so there's a lot of contrast and it makes the doodles stand out and look eye appealing on the cover. Then with the design have space for the title of the book on a piece of paper to give it that scruffy look, with the type being messy and handwritten way to give off that informal rebellion feel to the cover.

I have another idea of having a cola bottle broken in half and instead on the cola being black and leaked out i would make it red which would resemble blood. The colours i was thinking of using for my cover would be a black background, white, creams from the bottle and reds and blues for the outlines of the bottle and also the red from the blood. Despite it might be considered as gory or too much for a book aimed at 12 - 18 year olds. However i would have blood splattered out like leaked coke from the bottle and i want to go for a simplistic and small colour palette and kind of having a pop art style so i think it could work and be perceived as coke but just red. The drawing style would be very thin lined stroke perhaps and look potentially scruffy or hand drawn doodle or something around the that.

So these are some ideas i have for the book cover and have developed more and continuing to develop more to stretch out my mind and design ideas i could potentially do for this book.