Student Design Award 2020 Adult Non-Fiction shortlist

The concept aims to differ from traditional scientific non-fiction covers reflecting Bryson's writing. It is based on a quote on how the universe was created from the first chapter and that “it was all done in about the time it takes to make a sandwich”. The reader is given an understanding of the cover early on which helps to highlight the light-hearted tone in which Bryson communicates the scientific theories of the book. The hope is that the reader will get to page twenty-eight, read the quote and look again at the cover now understanding the concept.

Bryson uses metaphors to present complex concepts in an exciting yet accessible way. In my design I present this through the use of a famous wormhole analogy involving a pencil piercing through paper. 

The receipt in this context acts as a vehicle for type while still fitting the everyday aesthetic. The curving of the receipt brings a visual tension while its scroll-like characteristics add a grandiose quality that helps establish the book's immense scale. 

The block yellow background brings a striking contrast while also enforcing a sense of warmth and accessibility.

To represent Bryson’s book, I drew a parallel between his writing and the supernova phenomenon, explored in the 3rd chapter through Reverend Evans’ story. The colourful and explosive imagery allowed me to capture the dynamism and sense of wonder brought by the book. By featuring the chapter titles, I aimed to illustrate the “nearly everything” which these stellar explosions generated billions of years ago. Evans’ story also represents the popular nature of Bryson’s work, and reinforces the notion that Science can be accessible, as with a simple telescope in his backyard Evans outdoes several computers and cosmologists in supernovae hunting.

I have been inspired by Bill Bryson’s approach towards science; he makes complicated things easy to understand and he does that in an extremely fascinating way. In my design I wanted to show that the journey through ‘everything’ (although at first it may seem overwhelming), can actually be quite effortless and utterly enjoyable. I decided to use simple shapes of strange familiarity, bringing to mind images of cosmic objects and forms. I wanted my design to be both straightforward and eye-catching - showing that there is an immense depth in simplicity.

While reading the book I was struck by the analogies and facts Bryson used to explain complex theories and findings. So, when Bryson mentioned that bananas share more than half of their DNA with humans, I knew that was what I wanted to focus on. My design is not what you would expect a science book to have on its front cover. It’s a banana. But because of its simplicity I was able to turn it into a quirky abstract piece that makes the potential reader ever more curious.

The idea of everything is quite big; it really covers a lot of things. I also feel that everything is hard to put into a single illustration or picture, so I decided to use a purely typographic treatment. I chose typefaces and colors I felt evoked a sense of timelessness and made the word “EVERYTHING” as large as I could. It’s important that the cover tells the reader exactly what the book was about.

When thinking about how I should approach designing the cover for A Short History of Nearly Everything, I felt that illustrating a single image wouldn’t do the book enough justice. I loved all of the phrases that Bryson uses throughout and thought that recreating those words with a hand-lettered typographic approach could be really interesting. I wanted the cover to be busy and full of lots of engaging text, sort of like a sneak-peek representation of how much captivating information has been squeezed into one book.

As A Short History of Nearly Everything attempts to cover all the significant events and discoveries from the conception of the known universe to the present day, I chose to condense and visually represent this as a plastic model kit, ready to be assembled or in this case - unpacked. The information within the book itself then acts as a 'guide' to understanding the world around us, embodied by the plastic figures within the sprue.

My aim with my book cover was to try and show the earth in relation to the expanse of space, and how this great history and these amazing discoveries have all happened on our tiny rock floating in the void of nothing. The design on the front is almost meant to say that out of all this space and all these stars, this has all happened here and nowhere else. We’re one in a million.

The idea behind my design was to emulate the quirky yet accessible work of Bill Bryson and create something that could match this ethic whilst also drawing reader attention for its own merit. Whilst working on the cover my tutor warned me that it would be hard to narrow down the book into one image as it bridges such a broad spectrum of science and our universe, so I decided not to narrow it down to one aspect and instead covered all aspects of the book in a way I think Bill Bryson would be proud of.