Do Judge a Book by its Cover | Final Testing

Once I had tried out different arrangements for the jacket, I went on to the final stages of testing. I looked at colour, type, and other digital processes before creating my end design.

I did some quick swatches on a blank document to see which combinations worked well together. I seemed to pick a mix of earthy colours and muted tones - staying away from shades that I thought as being more contemporary (neons, etc.)

I thought that these subdued colours had a 'classic' feeling to them, and were perhaps more evocative of mid-century design.

 Here are some of the colours I tried. For the sake of testing I just lay the colour down quickly without thinking of neatness, however this led me to think about how I wanted the colour and line to be - should they overlap? Be out of line? Should the colour be controlled?

To get more of a sense of the completed product I placed type and tested out a few different layouts for the title. The vertical title was subtle, yet interesting. It also echoed the standing position of the figure.

Further colour trials. Blue and grey - cool, muted, but maybe a little dull? Red and green - punchy colours, but maybe too jarring. Capitalised type is also severe. Red and blue - a nice combination of bright and calm. However the hot and cool tones don't mix too well. Yellow and blue - I like this scheme, colours don't fight against one another, both are slightly 'off' variations of the original colours.

Once the front cover had been sorted, it was a matter of applying the theme across all panels of the book jacket.