Overview

During a service learning course my class was given the opportunity to create a book cover for the author Andreas Braun and his short story entitled "Colors". We were given the story to read and from that reading, and rereading we could take inspiration to create a book cover that would represent the message of the story well. My cover was ultimately chosen by the author, and is the official cover for this short story.

Process

The brainstorming portion of this project came after reading the story, and giving it many consecutive close reads and notes. The brainstorming really happened throughout the note taking process. Different aspects of the story brought forth different points for inspiration in the cover creation process. This was followed by some research into current book covers, to help find stylistically the kind of cover I wanted to create. Once I had an idea of the type of cover I wanted to create I went about making some thumbnail sketches to flesh out some of the ideas. I then refined a few of the most successful ones, and selected the best of those to bring into Illustrator and Fresco to create the illustrative style of the front and back cover.

Insights

This project really brought appreciation to the process of learning deeply and researching the product you are creating for. I knew that if I was going to create something worthy of the story the author had written, as well as be something that the author themselves could connect with as the cover for their story, then I had to myself deeply understand the story/product they were putting out into the world. One thing that we didn't get to do was speak with the author before brainstorming and creating. I think that if it would have been possible I would have loved to get some insight from them as well, as I went through the creative process for this cover.