Penguin Random House "In Cold Blood"

Penguin, being an internationally recognised publishing house, it's student award is very prestigious and offers a high level of professionalism. I would like to apply myself to producing work to this industry standard as I feel this would be a very valuable exercise for my current practice. 

I have selected the non-fiction award which consists of designing a book cover for Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood", a story of the murder of a family in Kansas at the end of the 1950s. Having either read or studied the two other books, I felt selecting one that I had no previous knowledge of would allow me to produce ideas with a fresh mind. In consideration of the often graphic and simple nature of my imagery, I also thought that non-fiction books as a subject would be well adapted to my image-making process.

This brief does offer a number of challenges - such as the emphasis on a strong use of typography within the design and the need to illustrate the dark and chilling content of this crime novel, both of which I am not familiar with in my current practice. The existence of these problems, however, in responding to this brief offers more reason for me to complete it as I believe that improving my skill in the use of typography is an important step in making myself a more well-rounded creative practitioner. It is also important for me to diversify the subject matter I am able to successfully approach as an illustrator. 

KEY POINTS OF THE BRIEF: 

• The design should be bold, maybe even shocking, break boundaries and remain true to the chilling content of the book. 
• The cover needs to have an imaginative concept and work cohesively as a whole; however the front cover still needs to be able to stand on its own. 
• It should appeal to a contemporary readership and be appropriate to the marketplace, whilst still having a point of difference against it's competition. 

REQUIREMENTS:

• All images need to be free of copyright. 
• The design should include all the cover copy supplied, designed to the specified template and incorporate penguin branding as well as additional elements such as the bar code ect. 
• Submitted as : PDF at 300dpi, CMYK, 5mm bleed, trim and crop marks included, 5MB file max.