OUIL403 - Do Judge A Book By Its Cover Idea Generation and Roughs

Chosen Book - 'Winter Blues - Everything You Need To Know To Beat Seasonal Affective Disorder'

Author - Norma E. Rosenthal, MD

Dewy Code - 615.8

I chose this book because the subject matter seemed quite interesting and was also kind of personal to me so I believed this would help me with idea generation as I'd be able to relate to or understand the topic of the book a lot better. 

Original Book Cover

I researched briefly into the subject of the book, which helped me to gain a better understanding of the condition (S.A.D) which in turn helped inform and expand my idea generation. Below are a few initial ideas/drawings that I did after brainstorming and research the theme/subject of the book. 

I wanted to be able to create a book cover that showed both sides to S.A.D. The positive side of beating the disorder and learning to cope with it, and also the negative side of having to suffer with the condition and the disadvantages it can bring you to. I tried to keep this in mind while thinking of different ideas and layouts. I also wanted to in some way tie in the season of winter, as this is when S.A.D is most likely to affect individuals. 

I came up with a few different ideas and from here went onto choose five of them to develop a little more into full scale roughs. 

Chosen design

I decided to go with the design that included the girl on the front cover on a black background. I chose this image because I thought it was a good representation of a mental health disorder and also because I thought it the darkness of the background can represent how dark it gets during winter but also the feeling of loneliness and isolation. From here I want to go on to develop this rough more and find out how I can develop the image to make it most effective.