Diary of a Young Naturalist
Year Three Project
As part of our course, we participated in Penguin’s Cover Design Award which has been running continuously for 16 years! We had to select two books, one from each category, and produce two separate, unique designs per book. Equalling four unique designs in total, of which we had to decide which ones we want to submit to Penguin. I chose the books “Diary of a Young Naturalist” and “Murder Most Unladylike”. MMU didn’t go well for me, I really struggled with that book, however, I found my footing with DoaYN pretty quickly. Of course, getting the results I wanted was far from easy even though I felt confident in the direction I was going with my designs. It took me a lot of iterations to get designs I was happy with, but in the end, I feel happy with the designs I made.
Getting these covers right was surprisingly hard! Although I discovered the early idea of the aesthetic and look I was going for the first one, it took a lot of iterations and materials to make it look right. I had to spend a lot of time making sure the letter shapes are not too playful but also not too serious, the decorative elements aren’t too distracting, and that it complies with what the book actually is. The general composition was a slight challenge too, putting one element in one place can completely throw the whole design off balance. The little ‘star’ elements add a certain amount of sparkle and contrast to the design that I really love, I think it mixes really well with the colourful letters.
As for the second one, I was messing around with shapes when I was trying to create something that looked organic until I made a shape that resembled an embryo to me. I kept working on it to make it smoother and more refined, but I also wanted it to be abstract too. I mirrored the shape and noticed that when put side by side it looks a lot like a butterfly/moth - a lunar moth to be more precise. I thought the double symbolism was quite cool and fit in with the nature theme. I expanded on it with the green colour palette and added a lot of noise for texture. To me, it looked like nature was irradiated, it was spreading its ‘spores’, and that the beauty of life is everywhere.