The story of this year competition is Emil and the Detectives which is a German-based story that apparently is very famous worldwide? I have never heard about the name before so I wiki the story and found out that it has musical and a lot of different versions of books. The story is about the little boy Emil's money is stolen and gathered a group of children who call themselves detectives, searching for the thief.
Here are thumbnails and quick sketches of Emil in my mind. He is quite thin and tiny due to the poor situation of his family but very curious and lively at the same time. The clothes he wears would be patched with different fabric with a typical German hat.
Different thumbnails illustrating the composition of the book cover. Ideas like coins on palm, staring out of the window in the train and flowing with important props of the story. Looking at the previous winner's work, it can be interpreted that Penguin is looking for simple but striking illustration that can attract customers from book shop or stores also have big title and clear introduction of the story.
A little worried if my style is what they are looking for but I will give it a go! Challenge!
To start off, I play with the type first since it is vital to a book cover and I am not good at type... I cannot write beautifully and I do not get that sense of beauty when looking at type therefore it takes a lot of time to experiment with various type by changing the brush setting in photoshop.
At the beginning I really like this style of type because of the uniqueness and playfulness the shape of the alphabets have.
But when I pull them together, they just seems like a Halloween title that really not suitable for this story.
Therefore more experiment on typography!
I sort of interested in the hand-written style on the left although I need more practice to write more define. I think it might be lacking of impact in terms of the size and the appearance which could be improved by placing differently and write more carefully.
After that I create Emil with really simple shapes and colour in order to simplify the book cover. I especially like the reflection in the eye which is the silhouette of the thief flipping the coins on his pam and that show more information of the story just by looking at the cover. It is a bit bland so I might add some light using ''soft light'' so as to present gradient of colour of the hair which might introduce some drama to the illustration.
Originally, I am going to use these patterns as the background however they are too dark and really not functioning well at the background when all the types are only barely visible. I decided not to use them but plain white background instead which surprisingly make a good composition and allow Emil and the texts stand out.
Here is the required text to put at the back cover, I write 'After him!' instead of typing because it is more influential and lively seeing hand writing than text from computer. I enjoy writing than typing like how I like drawing on paper than in the computer because I can transfer my feelings better through the warmth on the hand than using cold machines.
Eventually this is the final look of the title I decided to use. I am happy with where they are placed and the style of the typography especially the writer's name. I learn not to think too much before writing, these words are written down very quickly without much corrections and it is funny how I redo and undo hundreds time when trying to get the perfect Capital E at the beginning.
This is how it looks at last...not really!
The last element I want to add is this watercolour background as the white is a bit too plain.
Finally, this is the book cover I design for Emil and the Detectives. I could not find any information about the width of the spine so it is left behind until Mike replies my email. Other than that I am very happy with my first book cover in my life and a lot of great challenge during the production like making own types and fulfilling customers' need. It is not easy to be simple but informative which totally changes the way I look at book covers now. I can not wait to finish this!
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