Sophie Elm
Edinburgh College of Art
Explanation of work
I felt it unbefitting to visually explain the multifaceted text, but instead wanted to design a cover that lets the book speak for itself, therefore appealing to the literary reader – much like the early Penguin horizontal grid and Penguin Poets series covers. This led me to a simplistic two-colour design.
The sun, a positive symbol found in the book, influenced my choice of colour. The yellow, black and white is striking and fresh. The colouration and style of the border pattern draw influence from African textiles (a reference to the cultural ethnicity of the book) and from British textiles of the 1900s. Hand rendering of pattern and typography provides an accessible humanistic aspect, a quality found within Smith’s writing.
