OUGD404 - Initial Ideas

OUGD404 - Initial Ideas

Set 1

This set of book covers utilises found photography, type manipulation and pixel art to provide a convoluted and expressive set of designs. For each cover, these materials were set up in 3d scenarios and photographed. The unrefined aesthetic of these designs does make them the least successful of the 3 sets of covers, however it does reflect the extreme emotions expressed in these poems and juxtaposes conventional poetry book designs.

‘Selected Poems’ by Pablo Neruda, probably the most resolved of the 3 designs, uses pages of the book which have been warped in a photocopier and collaged, as a background. The foreground imagery comes from a photograph of a whiskey bottle which has been edited green to reflect the fact that Neruda always wrote his poetry in green to symbolise hope and despair. The cut out sections of this on the cover resemble smoke because in this ‘poetry of the senses’ set of books, Neruda’s work is applied to the sense of smell. 

‘Book of Longing’ by Leonard Cohen uses a similar idea for the background, this time with the back page turned negative, and black and white dots on the front and back, respectively. This visually communicates Cohen’s Buddhist believes by using the image of a yin - yang symbol and a similar sentiment is echoed in the some of the cutout shapes of the photograph of the guitar, which is clearly used as a nod to his career as a musician. 

‘Selected Poems’ by E.E. Cummings is probably the least successful of the set. While the cover shows off a refined collage which represents a line from one of his poems, using pages of that poem, The use of pixel art on the back does not match the tone of the book and is not used effectively. The use of colour is not as impactful as it is on the other covers. 

Set 2

This set of covers delivers a refined and contemporary facade to these 3 books. It employs the use of Futura type, images made up of punctuation and typography in black and white and single coloured backgrounds. 

‘Book of Longing’ uses a guitar tab from one of Cohen’s songs but replaces the numbers with letters, making up passage from one of his poems.

‘Selected Poems’ by Pablo Neruda displays a syringe made of typography on the cover. This correlates to the fact that when Neruda was on his death bed, he was given an injection which he was very suspicious of and 6 hours later he died, hence the question mark. 

The cover for Cummings’ selected poems depicts rows of asterisks ending in a ‘less than symbol’. This is a visual representation of a line from his poetry - “I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing, than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance”.

Set 3

The principle of this set of book covers was to provide a simple, less representational design which could be applied to each book to successfully appear as a set. Each cover is split in to 3, and uses symbols and punctuation which are representational of the poet. On each cover, one of the 3 sections is cut out to expose a passage of poetry on the page underneath. The covers use PT Serif Bold in order to demonstrate the heritage and literary prowess of the poets, while still remaining fairly contemporary.