The book cover for this project was an interesting project to have. It was interesting because when I learned what we were supposed to do, I had no idea that there were so many different plays and books out there that I had never heard about. The process for this project is different from the previous projects. Usually you would get the name of the book you are designing and then find a concept for the book cover. This time the goal was to explore creating an image that is beautiful and functions as a symbol and then finding a book or play that it fits. 

We had to photograph an ordinary object and make it extraordinary through lighting, point of view, focus, cropping, color, and scale.

We had to set up a simple background and use a lamp for a light source and photograph our object 30 times. Then we had to consider how a light, medium, or dark value background can add to the mood of the photograph. It was interesting because we learned a lot doing it. We learned that we could do many different things with the various things that we have around us. 

The project started out a little bit differently though, because it wasn’t like what we would have thought it would be like. Normally we would go out and research the different plays and the different books out there. The classic ones. But this time, we had to photograph objects and make them symbolic. This was a little hard for me to wrap my head around. But I was able to do it because I was able to look around me for things that could be symbolic enough to be able to photograph. 

At first it was hard, because I was not able to think of something. I started out just looking at the things around me and just photographing them in unique ways. It was a glass that had different things behind it, and that helped because I was able to start getting my creative juices flowing. This was very helpful. I was able to start getting different ideas. I was able to take pictures of things appearing and disappearing behind the glass. That was cool because I was able to see how it appeared to the symbolic eye instead of just the literal eye. I played around with different things like forks, knives, watches, etc. I even put my fiancé’s head behind the glass and it distorted the face to the point where she looked completely different. It was the start of something that really helped me out. I then moved on to things with harsh shadows, like knives and other objects around me.

After showing some of my peers, it seemed like they didn’t quite get the point of the object that was supposed to be symbolic. This was a problem, because I wanted it to be obviously. So I scrapped those ideas, and started with something completely new. This was the one that I ended up going with. I saw a candle, and knew that candles are a lot of times symbolic of hope, or love of some kind. Then I saw apples, and I know that they are used a lot in movies. In snow white, for instance, they are used by the evil queen to poison the princess. So I grabbed a pile of them, and photographed them thinking that I could edit it to be symbolic. I then tried just one apple. That looked good, so I held one in my hand and photographed that one. That’s the one that my peers seemed to like the best out of all of them. The last one that I tried was a piano with a flower on it. I wanted them to notice the flower first, and then realize that a piano was behind it. I liked this one because of the dramatic angles I could put on it photographed. This helped me out getting those creative juices flowing again. But I wasn’t sure if this helped out the criteria that we were supposed to follow in our project so I didn’t go with this one in the end. Instead, I went with the one of the apple instead. That one got a lot of good feedback from the people that I showed it to so I went with that one. 

I then went to work trying to find which play or book would go well with it. I googled “classic books” and the giver came up. That was an awesome choice for me because in the book it showed the apple as an object that represented the rebelliousness that it was in the movie. This was even more dramatic because I edited it to be black and white except for the apple that was still red. The peers that I showed it to for feedback loved that, so I kept it.

Then I had to find the right font to choose to go with it, and that helped me out because I was able to play around with a ton of different choices. I even went online to find other fonts that I could potentially use. After a long choice, I finally chose one that was elegant and simple. That looked the best in the context that it was. And that is how I figured out my final project!