OUGD404 - Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time

OUGD404 - Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time 

This cover for Stephen Hawking’s: A Brief History of Time uses one of the most fundamental topics of the book - blackholes, as a rule for its layout and design. The horizontal line across the top of the cover represents the ‘event horizon’ the distance from a black hole in which once matter passes, it will be sucked into the blackhole gradually, this is represented by the deterioration of the typography the further it is down the cover. The back cover body text also abides by this rule, shifting to the right also, indicating the location of the blackhole is the bottom right corner of the design, where Hawking’s name is, explaining why it unaltered as it is the epicentre, suggesting the grandeur of his mind. The chaotic irrational layout of typography also represents the incredibly unpredictable nature of the universe and how little we know about it, a notion visualised further by typographical forms in the top of the back cover, representing a multitude off matter and unknown things in space. 

The black cover with white typography is used to represent the absence of light next to a black hole and a noise filter has been added to the black to not only give it texture but elude to the gargantuan size of the universe. Tablet Gothic Compressed is used for the front cover typography to provide bold and bulky letterforms which will be attention grabbing and still legible when manipulated it. A Sans Serif typeface was chosen to represent the rationality efficiency and accuracy of science with, this typeface assumes a similar style to that of newspaper headlines from the former half of the 20th century, eluding to when Stephen Hawking was born. Franklin Gothic Compressed is used for the body text as a more refined compressed sans serif font, legible at smaller styles but still in keeping with Tablet Gothic.