Adrian Mole

Over the weekend I drew up a series of roughs for the Adrian Mole book cover. I feel like I'm starting to get somewhere with this brief. I have picked out 3 designs that I would like to work on in more detail. They are 3 ideas with contrasting themes and compositions. The first cover I made is of Adrian mole popping a spot on his face.

I like the composition of this cover with the character disappearing off the side of the frame in different directions. I made this image with cut and torn paper that has then been live traced in Illustrator and made into vector shapes. I don't think this is the best process for this image, the original sketch has over lapping shapes and very loose line work that made the composition more abstract. The more I work on these book covers the more I feel making an instant visual impact is important. I want to make a cover that plays with the format it is used for. There is only so much information I can convey without making an overly complex design. I want my cover to concentrate on one theme, emotion, character or message and illustrate it with a bold, thought provoking image.

I much prefer this image. I think the fact that all the formation is situated in the bottom corner makes the illustration more intriguing. The hair leaves plenty of room for the text I will have to add to the cover but I  would like to find a way to di it without breaking up the area of negative space. I could try and use colours fairly similar to the hair colour but that are still clearly visible. The other thing I want to try that I think might work is to have the text run down the side of the image in quite a small hand drawn font. I also want to see if I can make the text interact with the characters hair, that may help to maintain the form of the and scale of the hair while allowing me to make the text bigger and clearer. I made a couple of colour variations of this piece but neither of them really worked, I need to experiment more colour and texture to see where this composition leads!!!