OUIL505 Applied Illustration - Project Report

OUIL505 - Final presentation boards

Final constructed box set

This is the final constructed box set. I made a net out of grey board and then printed out the updated design net in reprographics using cartridge paper. I chose not to use the matt paper I used for my books out of fear that they might come out blurry again. Unfortunately, the print came out blurry and de-saturated on my cartridge paper as well anyway. On top of this, the net I made out of grey board was too big, so I then had to re-make it; sticking bits of board onto the net directly to ensure the sizes were accurate.

In the end, I had a box set of acceptable quality, though it is a bit rough around the edges - the wrap around design doesn't align perfectly and a few measurements are still off which make the edges a bit messy, but I think this is a decent attempt at something I'm not particularly good at.

Final covers printed

I digitally printed my book covers on the matt stock down in reprographics, but unfortunately they seem to have come out blurry and have lost all their sharpness despite being prepped at the correct resolution. On top of this, the stock doesn't really feel that appropriate for a book cover. The glossy paper may have yielded better results visually, but tears when bent, meaning it wouldn't have been appropriate either anyway.

It's unfortunate that coated one side paper is so hard to get because I think it would have really done my printed covers justice.

Final promotional products

Commemorative shopping bag and bookmarks

Updated box set net

Since I've decided I do have time to actually construct the box set, I updated the net so that it folds and wraps around the grey board more seamlessly and has a few more flaps to wrap along the inside.

A Hunger Artist Cover

This is the final cover of the collection - I thought about illustrating the cage of the hunger artist, and then its contents - pile of straw and small glass of water. I wanted to play with the image of the bars' shadows, as I thought it was quite visually striking, but I realised there would be a point where the bars would disappear into nothing, creating another vignette. I didn't want this, so I decided to exclude them.

By the end, I felt that getting a correct scale and emphasis on the glass of water was proving challenging and ended up detracting from the image of the straw, so decided to remove it.

With this image complete, all the covers are now done.

Box set

Box set mocked up with "books" inside. If I were to take this into full production, I imagine the most sensible way to create it would be to make the net out of grey board and print my illustrated outer design on a thin stock with high quality ink to then be applied to the net with spray mount or something similarly effective.

Shopping bags

As this is a special 100th anniversary release I'm proposing, I think it would be appropriate to give it a commemorative bag that customers will receive the box set in.

I mocked up my repeat pattern on a fancy shopping bag, but I feel that it looks a little feminine, which cuts my potential audience by half (in my proposal I'm trying to reach fans of Kafka and all literature, regardless of gender).
So I decided to re-appropriate the cockroach drawing which appears to be fitting on to most products really well:

I tried to find Waterstones brand guidelines to see if there was anything specific they said about usage of their logo. I couldn't find it, so thought it would be best to play it safe and  simply leave it black. I also learnt that apparently they rebranded themselves in 2012 to exclude the apostrophe from their name. "Waterstones".

A Country Doctor cover

Of the three motifs I picked from the book, the fur coat dragging through snow seemed most interesting to illustrate as it is one of the last images of the story. Building on the evaluation of the latest re-design of "The Judgement", I made sure to have this image going off the page as well so it fits with the rest of the set appropriately too.

The Judgement updated cover

In my progress tutorial, it was noted that the cover I had designed for "The Judgement", featuring the letter was the weakest. I had thought the same but couldn't quite figure out why, but Fred suggested that it had too much information and not enough focus on the letter. The fact that it was also a vignette exacerbated this, so I've decided to re-design it:

I tried to simply crop what I had already, but felt that it didn't work. So I re-drew the hand, played around with its positioning and finally came to a new conclusion:

Although there's something wrong with the letter that I can't quite put my finger on, I feel that this is a much stronger idea and composition. The letter is done with the scratchy shading that has been in the most recent covers I've done, making it feel a lot more suited to being part of the set as well.

Repeat pattern + bookmarks

 

I made a repeat pattern that I could adapt or put onto various products, such as bookmarks for example. I've also adapted the chain motif from one of my covers since I feel that it works well as a bookmark design.

I also updated the sticker I made before to say "Metamorphosis" as opposed to "The Metamorphosis" as this is the given title in the Penguin Classics version which I am basing my work off of.

Promo posters

I made promotional posters for the box set that could be displayed in or around a shop to advertise the release. While the cockroach illustrations are the most appropriate to have, I thought there was compositional potential for the chains illustration on a poster. I tried to adapt the other images from the other covers into the posters, but felt that they lacked the punch or their scales/proportions didn't really allow for them to go on an A-format poster.

Imagining it on sale at Waterstones Leeds, with a poster, vinyl window stickers and box sets mocked up on shelves:

 

Book cover stock

http://www.bestbookprinting.com/app/webroot/blog/?p=109

Coated One Side (C1s) seems to be the most common stock for paperback book covers.This is probably what would be most appropriate for my book covers. Unfortunately this seems hard to find unless buying in bulk. I think I'll have to find some alternative stock elsewhere.

http://connect.lulu.com/t5/Product-Pricing-Information/Binding-options-and-their-page-counts/ta-p/33673

This page also says something interesting: Your book must have 70-80 pages for text to appear on the spine. Very few of the stories I'm illustrating have that many, so realistically, if they were to be bound in their actual form no text would be able to go on the spine.

In the Penal Colony cover

Main motifs identified: 

• Prisoner chains
• The torture machine
• Twin needles
• Falling cogs/rolling in the sand

I thought that even though the cogs of the torture machine/a representation of the machine itself would be appropriate, there was a lot of compositional potential for the chains; and it was also a less obvious solution:

Third box mock up

Barcode consideration - A lot of box sets I've looked at have the barcode on the side of the box. I've done this, but considering the cockroach's placement, it would technically end up on the 'front' of the box set (considering books are read left to right and assuming the books are taken out from the right side). Therefore, perhaps the most appropriate place is the bottom.