BOOK COVERS

The Elephant Vanishes

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Norwegian Wood

Dance Dance Dance

Kafka On The Shore

further analysis

this is the image i settled with, it is a mixture of both previous book cover ideas.

i was really pleased with the reactions i got from this cover because on first glance the elephant has vanished....people were unable to see the elephant, which i felt was a perfect fit. i decided to keep the long shadow because a really liked the way it worked, but i felt the second elephant image i used just expressed more sadness. At this stage my cover was almost complete but i felt there was more that could be done. also in this cover you will see the darker colour and also only one single small line along the bottom of the cover, i decided to look into these further.

analyzing The Elephant Vanishes book cover.

this is my second image i felt the elephant with it's trunk to the ground really symbolised sadness. i tried putting the elephant in the bottom corner because i felt like an elephant especially younger or smaller ones always follow a heard, this elephant is walking alone. i also felt the white space surrounding the elephant emphases the isolation of the elephant.

this is the first image i used for the cover, it's one elephant with a large shadow formed in front of it. i thought with the shadow it would convey sadness, like the elephant is living in it's own shadow. in MURAKAMI'S books there's often a sense of loneliness and loss and i really wanted the reader to see this from the cover's image. i felt this image didn't work because the elephant appears (although in black and white) happy with it's trunk in the air.

colour

this is one of the first semi-finished covers, originally i had used much darker bold colours because i thought they were more eye catching. but the more i looked at them i started to think that they just took away from the images and the sense of emotions i was trying to convey so i decided to lighten all the book covers to softer colours.

small details

the small details on the books include a barcode and also a scanbox (you scan with your smart phone) to find out more about the artist.

to create the book cover images i used illustrator, i also used adobe tutorials for some of the images including the record and the magnifying glass.

the feathers on the right were my reference for the feathers i used on the wind-up bird chronicle cover.

on the left is the reference record and on the right is the record i made in illustrator.

this is my reference for Norwegian Wood, i decided i wanted to use a tree on the cover but the one's i drew free hand didnt have the tree like quality i wanted.....i wanted a bare winter tree no leaves and it also had to work in just black and white. in the end i used the stalk/stem from a bunch of grapes. i first put it in photoshop cleared the background and darkened the picture. i then dragged it into illustrator and live traced it, i also used the shape tool to extend the "trunk" of the tree.

MY FINAL DESIGNS

as my research shows, i just wanted a simple design...i didn’t want the design to take away from the book...so for the front covers i’ve left a lot of white space and the front flap i wanted to keep that simple as well, i was going to leave it blank but i thought that would be too much blank space so i added a quote from each book on the front flap.

i feel i kept the front covers simple but not too boring, i think the black images really contrast with the white...i chose baskerville (semi-bold) for the author’s name and HELVETICA NEUE (bold italic) for everything else, i chose these font because i felt they were very neutral and easy to read.

on the back covers i added three reviews which i got from the internet mostly Amazon, and i also added a bit about the book which i got from reading different articles about the books (Wikipedia)

on most books you will see a publishers logo, for my books i decided to create my own. i wanted to use something that crops up in the books a lot, which is the mention of cats....i thought it would be a nice way of tying the books together in a not so obvious way!

it also fits in with the black on white images that im using for my book front covers.

Norwegian Wood

this book is a nostalgic story based in 1960’s Tokyo,
so for the cover i thought it might be nice to look at something that symbolizes 60’s to use as the front cover image.....this is what i came up with.

on the left is the cover, on the right is my reference image.

i liked the design but i just thought it didn’t really work for this book cover design.

The wind-up Bird Chronicle

This is my first original book cover design.