Assignment two provides a creative opportunity to put into practice what you have learnt so far, by exploring the physicality of the book in relation to its function and working through the design process in relation to a set brief.
Your brief
Design the book format and cover artwork for two different versions of Daniel Defoe’s classic 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe. The publishers, Viking Press, have decided to re-release this title as a new pocket edition for readers on the move that reflects the adventurous nature of the story within a contemporary setting. This paperback version should have a modern visual feel that can compete with new titles in the bookshop. They also want a deluxe edition for armchair readers and classic book collectors that references the historical nature of the story and its associations. Produce book design ideas and cover artwork to reflect the content of the story across both formats and contexts. Be creative and inventive with both the look and format of these books.
As a side project to accompany the re-release of Robinson Crusoe, Viking Press has also asked you to design a new book called Washed ashore: The ultimate guide to surviving on a desert island by Rik Bennett. This is a ‘how-to’ guide that should reflect not only the practical advice it offers but something of the adventure of being a castaway.
The scale, stock and binding of these publications are up to you. The pocket edition needs to celebrate the functionality of the book as a lightweight, transportable object, and to connect to the story’s travel or survival themes in a contemporary way. The deluxe edition can present the content in a larger, finer, more luxurious, considered or expanded way, that perhaps makes reference to the history of the book itself. Your designs need to be seen as part of a series across both versions, so think about how you adapt your designs to fit each format. The shipwreck guide needs to be seen as a separate genre, piggy-backing on the success of Robinson Crusoe. Develop visual ideas that can distinguish the survival guide from your Robinson Crusoe designs, while at the same time making some thematic connection between them.
Your design should include the front, back, spine and flaps of your covers – if you opt for traditional bookbinding. You can also come up with alternative ways of binding, and therefore designing your books if you want to. Generate your own illustrations, photography or artwork for the covers, source copyright-free images, or treat the covers purely typographically. This is an opportunity to be creative with both your design thinking and outcomes, so experiment, and test out a range of visual and physical options.
You may want to extend your project by also designing several sample pages from the inside of the book. When creating sample pages, try to make a link between the cover design and the design of the inside pages.
Present your ideas by mocking up each of the books and their covers, and by presenting the overall spec of your designs (what paper stock you are using, etc.).
Work through the design process, documenting it in your learning log as you go. Use rough drawings, notes, diagrams, mock-ups of your books, photographs of what you’re working on, and by saving different stages of any digital work to show your process. Talk about your creative process through notes and reflections.
Research and ideas
Read the brief, identifying keywords, and do the same for Defoe’s text. You don’t have to read the whole book, but make yourself broadly familiar with the story and identify key themes, motifs and images. The full text of the novel is available here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/521
Identify the research you need to undertake. This could include researching existing versions of this cover, others of the same genre, or seeking inspiration elsewhere. The same goes for your survival guide. This brief requires some lateral thinking, so develop unexpected ideas, as well as the obvious. Generate thumbnail sketches to document and explore your creative thinking process. Aim to come up with a range of different ideas from which you can select and test different outcomes.
Present visual outcomes
Develop your initial ideas through making, drawing, collage, photography or whatever other mediums you choose. Be playful and let new ideas emerge through your making process. See this as a project, rather than a linear journey, so you may want to return to earlier stages of the process to develop new lines of visual enquiry or to take creative risks and try new things out. For the deluxe edition of the book, you may want to access the Bridgeman Library to source copyright-free illustrations from previous editions of the book.
Think about how your choice of scale, paper selection, and binding can help support your ideas in visual and tactile ways. If you are unable to source particular materials, then find other ways of visualising or describing your choices.
Layout the jacket using DTP software and incorporating text and image(s). Design a range of versions of the jacket to choose from. Print the jacket designs and make a mock-up of the jacket onto either an existing book or find other ways of mocking up the scale of the books. Photograph both versions of the book jackets as your final outcome to the project brief.
Reflection
Reflect on your outcomes but more so on your creative process – what worked for you, and how might you adapt these approaches for future projects? Just a reminder to think about how well you have done against the assessment criteria and make notes in your learning log.
What am being asked to do?
I began with an analysis of the brief using the template I had developed previously…
This helped me identify where to begin developing my ideas and research.
Primary Research
Defoe was said to have based Robinson Crusoe on the real-life experiences of a Scottish privateer, Alexander Selkirk, on the island of Juan Fernández off the coast of Chile in the Pacific. In 1704 Selkirk asked to be dropped off on the island after a dispute with his ship’s captain. He thought that he would be quickly picked up by any of a number of privateers sailing along the same shipping lane. He was wrong. When finally picked up four years and some months later, wearing little but goatskins, he seemed slightly crazed, had lost some of his ability to speak and showed symptoms of the depression that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
First published in 1719 it is regarded as the ‘first’ English novel, which by the end of 1719 had 4 separate editions which grew to more than 700 versions and translations by 1900. No book in western literary history has had more. It has spawned more than 20 movies; television shows; plays and pantos; 2 sequels; and has given the English language names and phrases still used today.
The book’s full title is ‘The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates.’
We do have a copy in our house that dates back to the 1950s according to the handwritten dedication inside to my wife’s aunt. I think it is missing its dust jacket but I managed to source an image of what I think it originally looked like.
This book featured the traditional image of Crusoe and Friday that you would conjure up in your mind when thinking of this novel.
This led me to look at other covers of the Defoe classic that stood out to me.
These all stood out to me for they are mostly minimal designs which didn’t directly reference the characters in the book. I wanted to stay away from the usual goatskin-clad figure with his doting man-servant and these appealed to me.
Secondary Research
Book sizes
Having to design 3 separate books I initially thought that they would all be different sizes. So I set out researching different book sizes.
B-format seemed ideal for the pocketbook version as this was the size of the copy I had at home(210 x 135mm) and this felt to me to be the right size for the smaller of the 2 novels. The hardback, collector’s edition needed to be larger and more substantial than the pocketbook so I thought that the size of 279 x 216mm was a nice large size to work with. This was the largest size recommended on ImprintDigital.com for hardbacks as any larger size would be reserved for picturebooks. I was unsure about the size of the third book at this stage but I had a point of reference to work from.
Materials
While researching the above website it did go into how book covers could be finished. There was the options to either clothbound in a 135gsm Wibalin with or without a dust jacket; or a laminated printed paper case. Paperback covers are printed on 240gsm and laminated. Both would also be able to be embossed/debossed, foiled or spot UV. The hardbacks could have head and tail bands, marker ribbons and custom endpapers. I had also thought about giving the hardback a slipcover. What weight and colour of paper would be used inside? 80gsm woven is the standard for fiction book pages however, for special editions, this can be thicker. If images are used inside it would be worth printing them on coated paper and having them inserted into the woven pages of the book. The pages of the paperback would probably be glued into place whereas the hardback would be stitched.
Inspiration
As stated above, I liked the idea of the cover being far from stereotypical with something other than Crusoe and Friday being depicted. I wanted to try and have some sort of underlying meaning behind the cover’s imagery or typography.
For inspiration, I read the synopsis of the book on cliffnotes.com and listened to a BBC Radio 4 podcast Desert Island Myths: Three Centuries of Robinson Crusoe which gave me more insight into both the book itself and the history around it.
I also started adding more imagery to my Book Design Pinterest board.
I also had a look at some of the books I had(cookbooks of course!) that I thought could be used as design ideas and how they were finished.
I like the material used to cover this book(Wibalin?) it is very tactile and makes the book feel more luxurious. It also has a marker ribbon.
The cover glued in place and the endpapers hide the joins.
These 2 books both come in slipcovers which give them a more high-end feel. I may use this in my final design for the collector’s edition.
Design
Mind Map
After clarifying what was expected of me in this assignment I then moved on to idea generation through the use of mind mapping.
I mind mapped the novel and included ideas from my research which naturally led the development of ideas for the ‘how-to’ book in the series. I highlighted the words that I felt I could work with and would generate the best outcomes. I was particularly interested in the religious aspect of the story and the bleakness of island life, rather than it being anyway near idyllic.
I have made a concerted effort to use a sketchbook/notebook more lately which I find hard as I prefer to work digitally(Old dog new tricks), but I did make some rough initial sketches which were my initial thoughts and notes.
My initial rough sketches/notes gave me 4 possible options to work with:
- Religion
- The island
- Footprints
- Palms
Religion
This was my initial approach to the cover when I first read the brief. Being a fan of typography my first direction for this was a typographical one. Being a fan of Roy Cranston’s experimental typography and recently discovered Wolfgang Weingart I wanted to try and attempt something in a similar style. I had recently watch a Youtube video featuring Roy Cranston’s work process and wanted to see if I could emulate it.
The main element of the design would be the cross, but not in its traditional form. I wanted to use type to form the cross and try to give it the bleak feel that I had identified in my mind mapping. I had also had the idea of using a photo of my own in the composition as I have relatives that live in the Caribbean who I have visited several times.
I also, somehow wanted to add the infamous footprint from the story in there too. I didn’t want the typical footprint in the sand, I wanted something different, edgier to fit with the design so I used a print of my own foot.
I liked the idea, but the execution didn’t quite work. The overall design wasn’t quite as appealing as I expected and I don’t think it would be attractive enough for mainstream book readers who are the target audience. It is however, something to bare in mind for future reference.
Island
The next idea was for an image of the island itself whether that would be a literal picture or something stylised. I had come across a few images on Pinterest of stylised landscapes and I liked the way that the flat designs worked.
I liked the idea of using the sun as a focal point of the design and had thought about using its reflection in the water as another element for the design in my sketches.
I started by dividing my cover into a 4×4 grid and using the bottom 3 rows as water and the top as the sky. I then added the sun and its reflection. I used a muted colour palette to give it a bit of a retro feel and not be too garish and in-your-face as in the case of the previous design. I then drew the island shape on the horizon and toyed with a reflection. It didn’t need it. Below the island were the title and author on a simple sans-serif font(Avant Garde Gothic Pro) which was understated to fit in with the minimal design. I then overlayed a linen texture to give the book its luxurious feel.
At this point, I was very happy and continued with the spine and the back of the book.
I’m still trying to work out why the publisher’s mark has disappeared!!
Still convinced that this was the final design I went on to mockup the collector’s edition.
I was on to a winner here so I moved on to the pocket edition. For this, I intended to do a type-based cover while keeping the theme of the first book. In my sketches, I had toyed with the idea of the letter ‘O’s in Robinson Crusoe withe sun in them. I used this as a starting point for the next cover keeping the sea and sky but removing the island and replacing it with type. The type itself I wanted to give an irregular look to represent the makeshift nature of Crusoe’s life on the island while giving it a contemporary look. I decided to mix upper and lower case of the same one used in the first book.
I even made a design for the endpapers using a repeating circle design.
While I was enjoying this particular design I knew I had 2 other options to explore, so I put this on the back burner for now and return to it later.
Footprints
Following on from the previous exercise, I wanted to try a similar style to the multiple-hats design I had done for The Handmaid’s Tale.
![handmaid-[Recovered]](https://craig519809.home.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/handmaid-recovered.png?w=739)
For this one, I wanted to give it a more classical look while giving it a modern approach. So using the same turquoise/blue from the previous design I set about creating a footprint pattern that I imagined would be foil blocked in silver on to the blue cover of the collector’s edition book. As in the above design I highlighted on particular footprint which could be interpreted as Crusoe’s or the cannibal’s footprint featured in the novel.
However, I didn’t feel like this was a strong enough response to the brief and was a little too much like the work of Coralie Bickford-Smith for my liking and the idea was consigned to the bin.
Palms
In the words of ABBA “I had a dream”(age-appropriate reference) that involved the image of a palm leaf disintegrating.
I had recently watched a Photoshop tutorial on how to create an effect featured in the film Avengers Endgame.
Obviously, this had resonated with me and the dream involved a palm disintegrating which was a metaphor for the destruction of paradise by the coming of the Europeans who enforced their rules, religion and way of life on the indigenous population. Deep I know!
So I needed a palm leaf to create the effect and sourced on from freepik.com that fitted with the idea of my design.
I then went to work trying to replicate the disintegration effect. It took several attempts before I settled on a result I liked.
This was going to be the basis of the book’s cover. The brief had asked for the book to have a modern feel but appeal to more traditional readers too. I thought that the image would appeal to both audiences but without the right font, it may lose one or both of the target groups. I played around with several fonts and typefaces and eventually settled on Futura as it’s both classic and modern with its clean lines. I also decided to apply Occum’s Razor to the type and remove as much as I could without losing the book’s identity.
This design had exited me the most and I could envisage it in a bookshop window and that it could be seen clearly from afar by passers-by.
It was at this point I decided to mock it up to get a feel for what it would look like as a hardback edition with the same textured, cloth-bound cover as before.
At this point, I wasn’t sure how I was going to differentiate between to collector’s edition and the pocket one other than size as I thought that the one design would suit both publications. Looking back at my initial research I had toyed with the idea of a slipcover which some more expensive books are sold in. This could be a point of difference that would definitely help to distinguish one from the other.
I found a suitable mockup and set about creating a suitable slipcover for the collector’s edition of the book. Should it be embossed? Should it be foil stamped? Silver? Gold? Then I thought that until you open the book(if you are not familiar with it) you have no idea of the despair and hardship within. So I decided to keep the illusion of paradise on the slipcover by keeping the palm leaf whole and intact and you don’t see its disintegration until you reveal the book inside.
I again wanted to repeat the use of a marker ribbon in this edition.
I then created a pattern for the endpapers using another image from freepik.com which I duplicated to create a layered effect similar to the cover of the Jungle Book by Tatiana Boyko.
However, I wanted to keep my design to shades of green and the overprint style didn’t quite work, so I kept them as solid shapes which worked much better in the context of this design.
I had to add my own marker ribbon to this mockup as it didn’t have one! This could also possibly be the lining of the slipcover.
So that was the collector’s edition done, now onto the pocket edition. I thought that this time around the pocket edition would have the same design as the collector’s edition but would be in paperback and in a smaller size(B5). I wouldn’t have any fancy slipcover, ribbon or endpapers, but would have to be quite robust if it was to be read on the move and the materials would need to take this into consideration(I will cover this later).
So here it is with its big brother.
Now on to the tricky one. I have a few how-to books in the house and lots of recipe books(which are a form of how-to books) but have never really considered the genre and its format. I did a lot of internet scouring and there was one really overriding element that appeared in how-to books and that was the use of symbols and icons. These were used to denote sections in books, in step-by-step guides, equipment/tool lists, flat-pack furniture instructions. They were everywhere! So, this was how to approach the trickiest book of the three. I would organise it around symbols. In the mind-mapping stage of my research, I had identified some things that may be needed to survive on a desert island – shelter, fire for cooking and warmth and water. I thought that I could create some symbols for my book cover for these important survival elements. Then it occurred to me that I could tie it in with the other books if I had a palm leaf symbols as well. The idea of having a how-to survive on a desert island book would only really come in handy if you were on a desert island. So this book also needed to be pocket-sized(B5) and it got me thinking of how it would be used. If you had it on the island with you, you could use it for reference and also it could be used as a notebook or journal. This then got me thinking about it being quite utilitarian in nature and would need to be functional over form and design. What sprang to mind were Aaron Draplin’s Field Notes that are meant to be carried around with you all the time to make notes and sketches on the go. These are purely notebooks and are stapled together. The how-to book would be a little more substantial and would need better binding than a couple of staples.
Source: fieldnotesbrand.com
I also liked the Kraft paper covers of these and thought that I could use this for my design which would fit with the utilitarian look I was going for.
So I decided to start with the icons/symbols I wanted for my book. I was going to use a palm leaf to tie the book in with the others; a tent symbol representing shelter; a fire symbol which would be for warmth and cooking; and a water symbol for fresh water.
These were the 4 symbols/icons I came up with. To link with the other books I coloured them in shades of the same green used for the type on the novels.
I then place these on a Kraft paper cover along one edge and added the type in the same font as the previous covers and in one of the greens to match the symbols/icons.
I was happy with the way this was going but it was still missing something. In my research into notebooks and journals, some had an elasticated band around them to hold then closed or open on a specific page, or to be used as a bookmark. I decided to add one to the book. I added this when I mocked-up the third book, which again was a composite of several mockups and took some doing. However, the result was pretty good.
Layout and materials
The layout of the cover, spine and back cover would be relatively similar on both novels.
Hardback
For the hardback copy, the cover will be 2750 micron board wrapped in 135gsm Wibalin with the design printed straight on to it. For the endpapers, a 140gsm Bond paper would be used as it is durable and has a matt finish. The pages would be printed on 120gsm Bond paper and case-bound into the cover with a green page marker ribbon. This would then be presented in a 2750 micron board slipcover with the palm design printed on the outside with a matt finish and the inside lined or printed with the endpaper design.
Paperback(Pocket edition)
The cover of the paperback novel would be 240gsm and given a gloss lamination to give the book some protection against being carried around. The pages would be printed on 80gsm Bond paper to help keep the costs down and would be perfect bound into the cover using an EVA (Ethylene-Vinyl Acetate) glue, again to keep the costs down.
How-to book
This book would be bound using 240mic Kraft paper with the design printed directly on to it. The circular icons/symbols would have spot UV on them to give them a shiny effect. The book would be perfect bound and would comprise of different paper types with instructions and information sections would be printed on 130gsm coated paper with sections of 100gsm Bond paper in between for writing notes or a journal. These could be perforated for removal if needed. The back cover would also have the elasticated band attached inside.
Conclusion
This was a challenging assignment as the idea of adding the choice of materials into the mix gave it another element to consider in my designs.
My initial research of reading some of the book and listening to podcasts added more context to the design process and offered up elements that I wouldn’t have considered if I hadn’t done this.
As before, I know that I need to work in a more analogue way before jumping into digital and I am trying to incorporate more sketchbook work into my idea development to give a broader source of inspiration for my designs.
Overall I’m very happy with the outcome I chose and received great feedback from my peers. The only criticism was in the choice of font and I had to explain that it was to give it a more contemporary feel. Personally I thought that the final design without type could be confused with Paradise Lost, but once the type was added it made sense. Of the 3 books the ho-to guide was the hardest to do without being too cliche. But I liked the idea of giving it a notebook feel that could be carried with you in case you got stranded on a desert island. The mockups were fun and challenging to create as I had to add elements to some which involved a lot of tweaking which I enjoyed.
The final designs were not at all what I set out to create at the start of the assignment but I think they are better for all the extra research and are more refined because of it.
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