Study task 3: Typographic treatments

Research:

'Show, don't tell'
It is important not to be too literal and blatant in your design. Designers tended to illustrate or photograph the characters in action during a scene taken right from the book. Design seem to have progressed to a point where people often prefer the simpler, more symbolic and less expositional approach to book cover designs.

Figure 1

Get symbolic
Look into the storyline of the book and develop a larger concept that shows what the novel may be trying to explain, but the imagery does not give all of the main events away. Figure 1 shows a cover designed by David Drummond, exploring the emotional strain of a polygamist. The wedding ring is used as a symbol of marriage and polygamy, using the red finger to signify stress and strain.

Diagonal scan
As we read from left to right, top to bottom, our eyes are thought to move diagonally across the page in a series or left to right sweeps. The Gutenburg Diagram (fig. 2) shows where the western eye falls as it moves through information. The circles show the area where we are most likely to look. Important information such as the title should intersect the diagonal path in at least one place. 

Figure 2

Study task 3:

GROWTH

The typographic treatment shown in figure 3 is for the adjective growth. The text size is shown to get larger as it travels down the page and the size of space allocated for each section of text is also increasing in size.

FREEDOM/COURAGE

Based upon research into the preferred diagonal scan of the westerners eye when looking at a page, I decided to illustrate the adjectives freedom and courage by going against the idea that we read from left to right in a diagonal movement. Figure 4 shows how the text has been purposely placed from left to right, avoiding the diagonal pathway that we are thought to find most comfortable when reading information. 

Figure 3

Figure 4