Penguin Random House, Former Winners - OUGD503, Studio Brief 01

Above are the former winners of the competition, many of the cover heavily feature typography for the main focus. Others have an illustrative element to them but as you would assume the illustrations are to give a visual to the title or bring the book alive they're not there to distract from the content. Some a very literal whereas others have a more subtle complex meaning behind them which leads intrigue and is maybe only there for people who have read the book before.

The example above has been chosen to show off the typographic entries. All the type has been influenced by the language used in the book itself the colours are inspired by the book title and previous book covers. Even the typeface used is influenced by the dystopian art nouveau style in which the book and the film have been written in.

The book is not a familiar one but from the cover being heavily illustrative an idea can be made up of what may be waiting on the inside. The playful nature of the character design being a non realistic body shape suggests more of a children's book or a young adult story. The title has been pushed tot he side a bit but it does lead the eye to look as if the book is being revealed within the illustration.

Although the patterns used on this cover are quite complex the lack of colour gives a very quiet minimal feel overall, this suits the title. Solitude can be very quiet and lonely so the lack of colour and other distractions leaves this almost hollow feel to the book as if you need to fill it by reading the story inside thus giving the book it's colour. 

This cover has been included to show the use of stock imagery/photography within the design, the idea behind the cover is quite a strong one showing that Wonderland isn't actually real and rather drawn up from real life. In practice the cover could have been taken further, the typography seems almost wedged in and lazy, the colour at the bottom seems to have been added in just to fill empty space. The idea can be seen but as a whole it doesn't seem to have been followed through fully.