Final Penguin Book Cover Design - illustrating 'Noughts and Crosses'

I am pleased to share my final book cover design for the Penguin Design Awards. I created a cover illustration for 'Noughts and Crosses'  by Malorie Blackman which is the Children's Cover Award. I really enjoyed reading this book as well as creating an illustration to represent the key themes and narrative I found throughout my reading research.

The image above showcases my final design printed out and mounted on card then folded into a book structure. I then placed it on my bookshelf. I did this because I wanted to see how the book would look if it were to be made into an actual book. 

I am very pleased with my final design. I think the use of a tree trunk base as the cover illustration plays abstractly with the theme of noughts of crosses both in terms of shape and form and colour and contrast. The base outline is a rough nought and the inside marks could be possibly thought of as a very loose cross shape. The colours are varied in tone which plays reference to racism, the differences between the black and white characters featured in the book.

The typography is digital and simplistic, I wanted to keep it clear and easy to read so that the attention was not taken away from the illustration. My favourite part of the cover is the tree trunk bases because I think I painted them well. I used the ink and bleach technique and enjoyed using a variation of tonal drawing inks. I think the gold ink background could be of a brighter shade but it does work as it is, sometimes subtle is better if the illustration is of a particularly strong colour palette and quality. To conclude, I like my book cover design and hope it will be considered as an entry to the Penguin Design Awards Competition 2018.