2023
I will be sharing my experience designing alternative covers for the book Never Let Me Go and the album Discreet Music. The aim was to produce high-quality designs that represented the respective works and grabbed customer attention.
Throughout the design process, I emphasised engaging with the source material to create designs that presented the works on a deeper level.
Process
Primary research on book and record covers
My design process began by going into book and record shops, taking photos and analysing covers. I found that I was drawn to covers that were colourful and had intriguing imagery that did not immediately present what the contents were about.
Understanding the material
A large part of my design process was analysing and engaging with the source material. I read Never Let Me Go and listened to Discreet Music to generate ideas based on the themes, feelings and contents that would work well on covers, as shown by my cover research.
Iterative design process
A key part of my process was coming up many different ideas for each cover. For the book cover, I focused primarily on story's themes, some of these being relationships and freedom. For the album cover, I was able to be more abstract and focus on the feelings it created.
Outcome
The final outcome of the book cover was a bright red book depicting a simple but bold illustration, representing the lack of freedom and the strong relationships in the story. The layout of the inside pages was designed to primarily be easy to read and follow.
The final record cover was an abstract collage of brown, grey and blue paper. The unsaturated colours, composition and texture of the paper represent the abstract music in the album.
