Pressure's on now kids...

Me and photoshop are not the best of friends, to say the least, we've had a turbulent relationship this past week or two..
I have however managed to do up a few designs  for my book cover on it, with definate tweeking to be done.. Here's some examples..

I know they look pretty similar, but I wanted my cover design to be simple, but impactual. I liked the idea of using the Scottish note because the novel is set in Edinburgh, and money as an image can symbolise corruption, which sums up the main character in a word.

I left the title of the novel out when I was working in photoshop because I had used a mixture of acrylic paint and pva glue to create a sticky, slimy looking gloop that i wanted to used to write the title in by hand. (Again a trust issue with technology.)

I put a noose around the characters neck as a subtle hint to the story of the book. Not to ruin the ending, but the main character hangs himself in the end....basically.

Fags...

Tuesday evening I started playing around with different typefaces for the books title (Filth) when I had an idea to use dirty cigarrette butts to spell out the word filth. (A bit preachy, I know) I placed them together after carefully picking them out of various ashtrays at home (vomits) and photographed them. The end result was ok, but I didn't think it really captured the essence of the novel.

Picking and Choosing

Well the past few days I have been working on various different book cover designs, and trying to narrow it down to three for tomorrow. Easier said than done. I'm having slight difficulty in choosing a design thats both typographically impressive, for the title and authors name, but also that has a striking and relevant image. It seems some of the designs that I have had so far are either one or the other. I need to combine the two for our studio presentation tomorrow.

At the start of the week I drew up a pair of handcuffs (running with the policeman theme) that I liked and thought were quite contemporary looking, I took inspiration from various grafitti designs that I looked at. I think im going to try combine these with a bold typeface for the title, for one of my ideas.

kick off.

Well, here we go again..


Just back from the big apple on Sunday and having missed the first week of ranking, I told myself I needed to jump in, feet first.
I have already chosen the book that im going to be working on, and it is Filth by Irvine Welsh, a favourite of mine. The book is a snarling, grotesque tale of a corrupt police officer in Scotland in the late 80's. The book is a jet-black comedy, written by Welsh interpreting the Scottish accent into writing; the use of Scottish slang and dialectical spelling to reflect the enunciation of each word. Welsh also experiments with typography throughout the book, where a tapeworms internal monologue is imposed over the top of the protagonists own internal monologue (the worms host), visibly depicting the tapeworms voracious appetite.
The book is both repulsive and compulsive reading and I feel that I can do allot with the imagery I associate with the story and characters.