For this ART235 assignment, I created three separate book covers for the same book. The book I chose to design for was How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell. Each book cover was designed with a different medium--typography, physical objects, and the designer's choice (I used a drawing program). I tried to capture key themes of the How to Train Your Dragon books, and stay true to the childlike innocence of them.
First up, the typography cover.
The inspiration behind this idea was Hiccup's dragon, Toothless. Toothless in the books is an incredibly naughty dragon, always clawing up and eating what he shouldn't. Hiccup's goal is to train him so that he doesn't get exiled from his tribe. To show this, I added scratches and bite marks to the letters.
At first I tried to imitate a part of the book where Toothless did, in fact, shred a book. However, I couldn't quite get the style right. Either the title was too hard to read, or it wasn't the actual focus of the cover. Then I decided to combine the shredded concept with another, simpler design I had doodled on a whim. The simpler design looked more like gold than ripped paper and wood.
Towards the end, I toyed with the idea of turning the title completely into embers. However, feedback said it was a bit too hard to read, so I went with the cleaner option.
Next up is the physical collage.
The prologue is written from the view of an old, old Hiccup, looking back on his childhood. He talks about how he is writing down his stories because the dragons are disappearing, and he does not want them to be forgotten. So I gathered up all the dragon related, mildly medieval objects in my room and created a desk that he might have used. I made sure to write out words in Norse runes, to stay true to the Viking influences.
At first I just photographed the desk and wrote the title in white pencil on the picture. Since my handwriting looks similar to Cressida Cowell's, and she adds a bunch of handwritten notes in the books, I thought it would be perfect. But then I realized I had forgotten to add the author, and there was no room with my method. So I had to recreate the desk and
problems you needed to solve during the process, and wrote out the title and author in the notebook. This was quite possibly the longest part of creating this book cover.
To be honest, I think I preferred the first iteration. But since it did not meet the requirements, this was a better choice.
Last is the designer's choice (or as I like to call it, freeform).
One of the key themes in How to Train Your Dragon is growing up. Hiccup has to work hard to become the leader he needs to be. He calls it 'becoming a Hero the Hard Way.' I wanted to show this, so I decided to draw a young Hiccup and Toothless, with the shadows of their future selves stretching up in the background.
The second-hardest part of this was figuring out how to draw shadows. I had to look up a lot of reference pictures and book covers that involved shadows. The hardest part was figuring out how to add the title. It was too long to add in one line, two lines looked clunky, and there was no place to comfortably fit three. I got a breakthrough when I stopped treating it as a solid block and started playing with the flow.
This one changed the least of all my ideas. It just went through a little bit of refinement.
(This is the ember-fied typography title that I rejected. I'm still proud of it, so I thought I'd add it as a bonus!)
