Once Maithili told me, designing book cover is like designing movie poster. Only difference is the size. All design principles remain the same. It should have loud shelf value, also how a movie poster communicates 3 hrs in a single sheet similarly the book cover should manage to tell the gist of 300 pages.
I completely agree with her when I recently got an opportunity to design a book cover. The story is about a guy called Jamal who became a terrorist after stabbing a police inspector and being beaten to death, he calls himself JIMMY. The author Omair Ahmed aesthetically captured the tragic life of Jamal and his father Rafiq and circumstances which transformed him to become aberrant human being. This story is set in northern part of UP, India around 1990.
After reading synopsis and few chapters of this fiction I decided only calligraphy would do the justice for this kind of subject. Thankfully I managed to reflect the same expressions of the content through the words. Editor, design head and the most important the author accepted the result and were happy too about the cover.
I got the chance to attend the launch of the book too. I was quite thrilled to see the blown up of cover used as promotion materials, backdrop etc. In the night this contrasting cover with black calligraphy on the stark white background with red accent was standing out beautifully in ambiance.
Here its the book:
And here is the full spread, designing a book jacket is 'more' fun, more scope to play.
I completely agree with her when I recently got an opportunity to design a book cover. The story is about a guy called Jamal who became a terrorist after stabbing a police inspector and being beaten to death, he calls himself JIMMY. The author Omair Ahmed aesthetically captured the tragic life of Jamal and his father Rafiq and circumstances which transformed him to become aberrant human being. This story is set in northern part of UP, India around 1990.
After reading synopsis and few chapters of this fiction I decided only calligraphy would do the justice for this kind of subject. Thankfully I managed to reflect the same expressions of the content through the words. Editor, design head and the most important the author accepted the result and were happy too about the cover.
I got the chance to attend the launch of the book too. I was quite thrilled to see the blown up of cover used as promotion materials, backdrop etc. In the night this contrasting cover with black calligraphy on the stark white background with red accent was standing out beautifully in ambiance.
Here its the book:
And here is the full spread, designing a book jacket is 'more' fun, more scope to play.
Photo Credits: Aman Sagar
