Gareth Lawn
North Wales University
Explanation of work
The book Jacket that I’ve done is meant to take a step away from the foil blazed highly illustrated covers that seem to fill the thriller genre. The Brief mentioned that buyers need to see the book and feel instantly as if they are on the edge of their seat, this was something that I really wanted to focus on, how could I make something look so disturbed and strange that when a reader looks at it, they will feel uncomfortable.
What I didn’t want to do though is make something that was so gruesome that would turn people away from reading the book. I looked at how other medias (Film, TV, and even rides) have made people feel uneasy and one thing that came up was the idea of having something bad and evil, but not actually showing it. This is what I wanted to do for my cover as it would give me a way of showing that there was something bad going on without actually seeing what it was, which meant that I wasn’t giving the story away and I was letting the readers mind imagine whatever it wanted to.
Reading the book provided me with some fantastic imagery in my head of what the environment and the characters would look like. One of the major things that stuck in my head was the colours in the environment Haiti the main location was unlike many of the other nearby Islands as it had very little greenery, instead it is described as being the colour of ‘red mud’, other things that stuck with me are the way the signage on the shops and bars is described, hand painted that would of looked like works of Art when they where new, but erosion, war and lack of care had left them needing re-decorating. The Signage was one of the major contributing factors that led to the chosen typeface.
These Elements and more where things that I wanted to use in my actual cover as they wouldn’t give any of the story away and yet they might help start to give the reader ideas of what the environment might look like, and what the atmosphere might be like.
The Other concept I wanted to bring in comes directly from the book. The Story revolves around the theme of Child Kidnapping, and I wanted something that would echo this on the cover. Originally I was playing wit the idea of directly using the Boy Soldier form the book (This is where the myth of Mr. Clarinet comes from), but I felt that this was taking something away from the book.
On the Back of the cover I didn’t want the type to just be formatted in a column, I wanted it to stand out a bit more, so that if a potential buyer was reading it they would find it easy to read, and they would also find it interesting to read, this meant that I kept the typeface clear and clean and highlighted parts that I felt where important.
Overall I am pleased with my cover but would liked to experiment more with surface finishes and even a better effect on the cross to try and help the book cover stand out a bit more.
