just so stories
the idea
For our design class, we were challenged to create our own cover for Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. The ability to have the creative freedom to make the best book cover for whatever intended audience we chose was extremely exciting. While I am mostly interested in the Young Adult market, I thought I would give myself a bit of an extra challenge by making my cover for an adult audience.
I did not grow up reading Just So Stories like my UK peers, so I was unfamiliar with the stories and dove in right away to try and understand where I should begin my design journey. After reading and creating a list of other adult-orientated covers for research, I knew I wanted to stray away from the over-used animal design. Though a lot of the stories center around animals, there’s plenty overlooked stories to design around that aren’t.
After a few days of mulling about design ideas, I decided to let them come to me and focus on other work. Luck was on my side, typography ideas hit me quite quickly after that. I made a quick note in my phone of this idea (badly sketched with my finger) at 4am.
In the same notes as the sketch, I wrote:
staggered writing, very sleek and modern font
adult literature classic
the first draft
Rough, like I said! I also very obviously was unsure on how to spell Rudyard without the help of a search engine – embarrassing but true. Once I had this idea down, I decided on the elements and how they should look around the lettering. I loved the idea of The Butterfly That Stamped taking focus of the Just So Stories universe and decided having an overarching nature theme would suit the book and it’s narrative well.
I decided that photography would work well, rather than illustration. I visited unsplash.com to gather some images that work well around the typography idea I had. I found this image by Daniil Silantev and decided to have a first run with it. This was the first draft (right).
the first real draft
After this, I did some more cover research. Novels like Pine by Francine Toon and Please Read This Leaflet Carefully by Karen Havelin both inspired me in their design. Very simple yet bold elements that work together classically. I loved the image above, but it just didn’t work well. I decided to go more floral and found this stunning image by Han Chenxu of pink flowers coming down from a branch. There were a few branches of it, so I know I would be able to place it around easily without using the same part of the image over and over, creating a more diverse cover. Then, I found these beautiful butterflies to add on (blue butterfly by Ray Hennessy and yellow butterfly by Aaron Burdon). Making sure they were the right size and angles to suit the floral image was important to make a smoothly merged cover. I also had the idea to have some pink petal accents around Kipling’s author photo and the barcode. So those are part of an image from Skyla Design. With a combination of all of those images, I created the beginning of my next draft.
figuring out typography
I felt a classic serif font would work really well with the almost classical, soft images. I wanted to mix it up a bit by warping the text to make it almost look like it was blowing in the breeze. I also added a bit of depth to the cover by attaching a drop shadow to both of the butterflies in a warmer, slightly red tint (rather than plain black). After a first run with this to my lecturer, there was feedback: hierarchy, font, splitting of the name was all wrong. So I began with that aspect again. I wanted to start from scratch and I went searching for the perfect font. Talking with my lecturer, we felt like basing the new font similarly to a cover like Hot Milk by Deborah Levy – something sans serif – would complement the classical imagery with a more modern twist. Then I found Dolce Vita, the perfect font and the one I used for the title/author name/back cover. I modified the front cover type, adding in the long lines to create a more dynamic and interesting wording to fit in with the design of the cover. I grabbed a quote from the butterfly story in Just So Stories to add to the back so that it would fit in well with the cover and made it the same Dolce Vita font. By placing the quote around the page, I am making it a bit more engaging and fun, as well.
the final decisions
I’ve also decided to change the petal behind the barcode. By making a bit more of a normal barcode but with a fun boarder the same color as the flowers, it really goes well with the clean lines of the rest of the book. I also changed the strap line from wrapping up the branch to another sans serif font but contrasting the cover in all lowercase and more curved lettering. Once I had the front and back cover the way I wanted them, all I had left to do was write the author bio and blurb! I felt adding a bit of fun with making the title and Kipling’s name in Dolce Vita and the rest of the text in my strap line font (Avenir Next). It helped keep everything even and make sense in relation to the rest of the book.
Once everything was written down and all formatted correctly, we had the finished cover. Something I had worked for months on coming to fruition was so fun to see!! I absolutely loved the journey of getting here, which was an extremely educational experience. Check out the final cover recreation!