Penguin Competition - To Kill A Mockingbird.
This piece of work was for a competition brief selected in our third year of university. This competition was held by Penguin Random House UK, they wanted a redesign of the traditional book To Kill A Mockingbird.
The brief asked us to redesign the book cover with an imaginative concept, it must be competently executed with a strong use of Typography.
When I originally received this brief, I wanted to take a new approach to the design without reverting to existing approach’s in previous covers.
I considered the period that the book was set (1933-35) and the location (Alabama, America) to give me a rough basis of information to develop with. Considering a new approach was quite tricky as so many paths had been taken before but I felt that racial segregation was not one that had been covered, yet it was a key factor in the storyline.
The Great Depression was apparent in the books theme, thus keeping a minimalistic approach was key in representation, I tied this in with a black and white theme.
The title of the book is staggered along a pathway represented from a tree I sourced locally. I wanted to keep existing features of previous book covers on my design to make it recognisable to members of the public however I wanted to incorporate my own take on this. I have incorporated the swing from existing books as I thought the feature worked well previously representing ‘Scout’, however I incorporated ‘BIRD’ into the swing in representation of “Thomas Robinson” the accused. I hung the swing at the end of the capital ‘G’ as I felt the dominance and clarity of the G represented ‘Atticus Finch’. I felt that these three characters were key in the book and linked closely together, therefore they should be linked in the design of the cover.
Each letter on the design of the title represents a different person in the book, I have chosen different shades of Black to represent the united stand of different people. It shows that we are all different no matter what the colour of our skin is.
I have designed the cover to be printed in raised gloss type, on a plain white gloss background. The white represents the power of the society before ‘Atticus Finch’ represented ‘Thomas Robinson’. The concept is that the Black shaded letters raise above the power of society, thus representing the differences in society and the power they have standing together against society’s normalities.
Amazon Kindle cover mock up.
