Chosen Book

After researching both books and understanding the stories, the novel I have chosen to create a book cover for is The Outsider by S.E. Hinton. I have chosen to create a cover for this novel for a number of reasons which I will explain below.

Personally it was a straightforward choice as The Outsiders book had a lot more to offer, in terms of book cover ideas. The story and plots themselves allowed for great brain storm ideas. This was because it had just one main plot which developed through the book allowing me to concentrate on that story. Whereas, in What A Carve Up! there where different stories for all the characters so there was not a certain theme to be influenced by.

in addition, the wide variety of book covers already designed for The Outsiders gave me vital inspiration and design ideas which will help greatly when creating my book cover. These included ideas for typography, imagery and colour palettes. Again, What A Carve Up! failed to inspire me as there was a lack of book covers designed for the novel.

In general The Outsiders has more topics and cultural references which I can play with to create relavant design ideas. These include things like the rivalry between the gangs, the 1960's hairstyles, the denim clothing, cigarette smoking, burning building and death of a character.

In conclusion, I believe The Outsiders is a better read and due to the reasons stated above I will create a book cover for this novel.

Existing book covers

There are a wide variety of book covers that have been produced for both novels The Outsiders and What A Carve Up!. However after research I have discovered far more book covers available for The Outsiders than What A Carve Up!. 
Some of the covers are simply design ideas that have been put forward as competition entries, while some have actually been used to cover the books, depending on the distributors. Below I will analyse some of the book covers I have discovered for both novels.

The Outsiders:

This is the first book cover I will analyse and as you can see this obviously displays the full book cover including the front, spine and back. This is something to note as not all the book covers I have looked at include the full cover. The first thing you may notice is the contrast in colour from the front page and the back page. The front page has a pale blue sky and pale green grass also it looks like there is a layer of opaque white on top of the background image. This may be used to enhance the black silhouette image of, what appears to be, the greasers gang. Whereas, on the back page a vivid yellow colour is used to illustrate a sunset. The same image of the greasers is used here but it is faded into the sunset. Again they have used a silhouette to show the horizon which contrasts the sunset. This is an effective design as it is consistent with the front page. The type face is a simple sans-serif font which would be effective for the text however the type has been kerned too much causing it to be almost unreadable, this is evident in the blur. Overall this book cover is a good cover although some adjustments could be made such as the type.

This is another book cover for The Outsiders and was an original published book cover. Firstly, the image in the middle is a notebook page shaped in a slightly comical skull. This is a great image as it plays on the content of the novel. It refers to the teenage boys in school who have rebellious attitudes, the skull may also signify the death of a character in the novel. In addition, the hair strand on the skull makes associations with the greasers hair styles which is very effective. The same notebook style is used on the back and spine to create text. This text appears like it is hand cut from the notebook pages and is successfully used to create a harmonious style throughout the cover. The type face of the blur is in a serif fonts which creates an easy read and makes the cover look professional, although it appears a little text heavy. The main title is split into two type faces which I believe works really well. The first text "The" has hyphens beside it which perhaps portrays a barber shop font style which again refers to the hair style culture during the time of the novel. The second text "Outsiders" is in a bold red type face which looks slightly playful as its does not have straight lines. This book cover has given me inspiration and some ideas which I could implement into my own book cover.

This cover is a competition entry design for the novel, which would explain why only the front cover was created. This cover has a minimalistic character which represents a modern take on the design. This is because only three shades of colours are used and there is only one image with a solid background colour. This cover could have influences from the famous artist Andy Warhol who created artwork with contrasting colours and vivid shades. This is apparent as the background colour is yellow with the contrasting red blood splatter, red text box and white typeface. Although the cover is minimal it still manages to relate to the plot of the story as the knife, along with the blood splatter, illustrates the rivalry between the gangs and eventual death of a character. When looking at the typography you can see the title is bold and striking. This is created by using upper case letters and the contrasting colours with white against the red. In addition the use of a clean sans-seriff font allows the type to stand out even more.
In general, although it lacks the rest of the cover, I am impressed with this simple cover design and how effectively it utalises the contrasting colours. I also like the transparent effect, on the red splatter, that shows the knife through it.  This cover has some interesting concepts which I will take on board when creating my book cover.


What A Carve Up!:

This book cover is an original cover used by Penguin books. The image of one of the characters in the novel is featured on the cover, this image has a vintage newspaper feel due to the colour and looks as if its been cut and stuck on to the cover. There is a high contrast of colours allowing the type and image to stand out from the background. The size of the author name is noticeably bigger than the title of the novel, this a design style that continues through most of Jonathan Coe's novels as shown in an older post. As this is an older cover it would explain the use of a serif typeface, however it appears to be a modern serif. The positioning of the different type are situated around the image of the character which gives the cover an engaging appearance. The cover is very colourful and would clearly stand out in any shelf due to the green background. However, it is odd that the title is in white because it does not allow the title to stand out as it is not contrasting the background colour.
This book cover does not excite me and would not persuade me to pick it up and read it. Also the cover is simple and does not have any undertone or connotations to the novel apart from a picture of the character.