Book designs

• After deciding it was time to step back and stop designing to really think about the concept behind how each book would link to one another - I realised that I had to either redesign or completely scrap some of my designs as they wouldn't fit the concept
• My concept is a journey about a guy (Murakami) as he leads us (the readers)  through his mind, almost like a tour guide
• I decided on this particular colour scheme because I thought it represented the weird and wonderful magical realism present in much of his books - you wouldn't necessarily expect to see the colours used together - the odd interaction is supposed to represent the odd encounters present in the books
• I wanted to aim my books at the young adult audience (people like myself) the white negative space with the pop of colour and really modern type add well to this idea.

Difficulties:

It was incredibly difficult to read the books and try and find a concept to link each book together to create some kind of sequence. Some books definitely link better than others. Some of the books had no real content to make real interesting, impactful imagery from, and some were just completely different from the previous book or the following book.

Successes:

The books do link really well together and I think the concept was really effective. The colour scheme works really well and the use of illustrator and simple imagery throughout creates a real cohesive set of books. The overall aesthetic is a perfect representation of me as a designer which is successful in terms of building a portfolio and pitching to future employers.

Other thoughts:

During the process of making each design, I did start to miss the analogue way of making work and thought it would be interesting to perhaps add some texture - whether that being digital textures or physical - the only issue with this is I'd have to incorporate this effect with the rest of the designs otherwise they wouldn't appear as a cohesive set and some of the designs wouldn't work so well with the added texture.