The Wind in the Willows; book cover design.

Template for the competition entry as a basis for the book cover to then apply my own artwork to. 

I put the characters with the text I created to see if the two would work together and I feel that they do. 

Here i've tried to bring in the tree on the front cover but this doesn't work because it makes the text really difficult to read, also brought in a background just to see how all these elements will begin to work together. 

The tree would probably work better on the back because theres no other imagery on here at the moment. 

I've then considered making it smaller because the blurb will need to be written too so there needs to be more space. 

The design above felt a bit spacious so i've added another tree on but feel this possibly looks a bit odd being so symetrical. 

I selected a few different colours present in the imagery for my cover to apply to the background so I can see what is going to work best. All these colours also have justification and connection with the story.

I added the watercolour background that I created behind the background colour because this links the imagery to the background and gives it a bit of depth. I continued to experiment with colour because with the watercolour background being blue it would effect any colours chosen. I feel this last blue works best because its quite positive with being bold and doesn't look as washed out as some of the other colours. The blue also links the same as the title of the book with being the same colour as the lake that the characters spend a lot of time at. 

I then decided that the title on the bottom of these two blended into the background too much and this definitely needs to stand out so that people recognise it on the shelf. The darker one definitely works better because this is more likely to be seen from further away, it stands out and it works with the imagery on the cover. 

I then decided to start moving the characters around a bit and thought if they were popping up from the edges of the cover this would work quite well and with it being a childrens book comes across as quite playful. On this example they are probably too far off the edge though and a bit too hidden. 

This works a lot better because you can clearly see all the characters. 

Here i've taken the opacity of the background down a bit because I felt it was a bit too strong and was taking the focus away from the imagery. 

After applying this opacity I decided to apply it to the three too because I thought this was definitely going to work better in the background and being quite subtle because although its a key element it's not quite as important as the characters. Although the front cover is busy, it doesn't seem as much with the tree being quite faint. 

I then thought that the tree could work better if it was applied across the two pages because it creates a nice background in itself and it links the front page to the back and vice versa. The direction of the tree also makes it look like its blowing in the wind which again, links back to the name of the book. 

Opacity taken down on the tree to have more focus on the characters. 

When I started working on the spine I realised that the title would be applied over the top of the imagery making it too hard to read. 

I decided to move the mouse to the top but feel this works a whole lot better because it brings a lot of balance to the cover as a whole, both front and back considered. I decided to take the watercolour background away because I felt that with the tree it didn't really need this and probably started to look all samey with the imagery. I've added the author and other relevent text as required on the penguin brief in black to link with the outline of the imagery. I've used the same font that the hand rendered idea came from to link this all together too. 

I decided to change the blurb copy and 'introduced by' to times new roman as I felt this needed to be different than the rest as its easier to read. 

Moved the author slightly to see if it work better at the top of the page. 

Arranged the book title differently to see if this would anything to the overall design but I feel this makes the whole thing look unbalanced. 

Although this layout looks fine I feel that having the author at the bottom makes it read slightly weird and appears too close to the title. 

I've moved the blurb text more central to fit in with the layout on the front of the cover and feel this balances better with the imagery on the back. I've also changed all the text to this purple/blue colour and I feel this looks a lot better because the black is quite harsh on top of the background colour where as this fits in a lot better. 

This is the current final design for the book cover. I feel this works really well because theres balance on both sides of the cover and the colours all compliment each other. The imagery style is particularly good because it suits the target audience of children. I wanted to keep the cover quite simplistic because when something is appealing to chidren it doesn't need to be particularly fancy. The title style also works really well because it brings more depth to the overall design but can still be read properly. The blue background has significance because the story talks of a character that boats along the river so this can represent that element and it generally compliments the other colours well. Overall the cover looks busy so looks well considered but at the same time, not too busy so that it causes confusion.