Don't judge a book by its cover
a redesign of the classic tale to kill a mockingbird
awards
First Place in Graphic Design at the 2020 Cerritos College Student Art Exhibition
Overview
This redesign of the popular classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird is designed to show a literal and figurative representation of the book. The bird on the cover is being smashed to death by a judge’s gavel as a representation of the killing of an innocent man during a trial. Since this story is narrated from a child’s perspective, the colors of this design are bright and childlike.
challenges
The most challenging part of this book cover was designing the typography for the title. I ended up using a stroke for the lettering but increased the size so that it would stand out from the blood spatter that is the same color.
solution
To keep with the theme of child-like innocence, I designed this book to use bright colors and decided to use linework to make them pop against a black background. The bright colors are juxtaposed by the gruesome imagery of the bird being smashed to death to draw the attention of the consumer.
process
Part of the process is researching the book’s contents and previous renditions of covers to see what has and has not been articulated already. After researching, I decided on using the literalness of the dead mocking bird but added the judges gavel to imply more meaning. After designing the graphic of the bird, I placed it and started designing the typography for both the front and back. Then, I added the blood spatter to fill in the gaps between the typography and the imagery.
