Ambit Book Cover: A Senior Narrative Book Jacket by Elena Razgonov (2017)

As with much of my work, my book jacket was inspired by mid-century design. I enjoy working with flat design and I continued that trend here. As I worked on it I looked for new ways of expressing the plot of the short story. I ended up with a silhouette of the main character running through the boy scout badge which he’s trying to collect. The badge is in a puddle of goo as was suggested by other students. My biggest struggle was getting started as I didn’t have very many ideas I was in love with. So I took small steps towards finishing the book jacket by creating the title, publisher logo, and text. However, once I had the cover art done, I still felt as if something was missing. However I didn’t really address it, but looking back I can see that I fell into a big pitfall of flat design which is keeping it fun, engaging, and simple without sacrificing too much. Something that would’ve really helped is if I added distressing and gave it a more raw, classic print feel. While the point of the design was to keep it flat, it feels too flat.

I’m most proud of how layered the cover art feels. If I were to change something else that would be tweaking the colors because it still seems too dark. To be honest, I don’t feel like I learned too much during this project. I stuck t to similar design styles I have been using and I didn’t give myself the opportunity to refine it further before turning it in. This project further instills in me the idea that simple doesn’t mean easy. Just because something is minimalist, that doesn’t mean that the same care and effort weren’t put in as with something more busy.