Do judge a book by its cover: Initial Ideas

For this brief we had to create a jacket for a book, of your own choice, from the library.  

I choose a book called "Belonging: A culture of Place" by Bell Hooks. It is a series of essays talking about  rural America. 

Reading summaries I identified themes and ideas that I could use and explore within the book jacket: 

- community

- segregation (racial as well as rural and urban segregation)

- a connection with nature

- a sense of belonging 

- a disconnection/ feeling lost/ no sense of belonging 

- Appalachian/southern culture

Immediately, as a result of this reading, I gravitated towards using a contrast between urban and rural scenery to express my ideas. I wanted my work to be emotive and capture an unrest, or sense of disconnection of place.

In this brief I felt like I finally started using my sketchbook effectively as a way of exploring visual ideas. I wanted to find a number of ways of using the book jacket - such as finding a way to use one image for the whole jacket, framing my images within the cover and then also using vignettes across all 4 surfaces. 

I like this image of a jagged divide in order to represent the racial segregation that Hooks talks about in her essays. I think that it has the potential to look really dramatic and work well as a visual motif.

Here I am exploring ways of using one image across the whole of the book jacket. Something that I would like to refine and perhaps use as one of the compositions for my roughs. 

Using these initial ideas I need to start experimenting more with different media and ways of working to make the images aesthetically pleasing and eye-catching for the book cover. I also need to start looking more at composition and how to use these images in the most dynamic way to cover the book jacket.