Book cover research

Previous/original book covers for wonder:

The original book cover for Wonder is very illustrative, and simplistic in terms of colour scheme. It follows a mostly blue, and sometimes yellow colour scheme with black and white elements that create contrast. The blue represents the sense of wonder, as the colour itself connotes imagination, especially when paired with quirky illustration.

Tad Carpenter:
"We believe that the book itself should be what paints the picture of this captivating character and so we approached the Wonder jacket in more abstract terms. With Auggie’s appearance being such an integral part of the Wonder story, our choice was to abstract the character as to not influence the readers’ perception of who Auggie is, while also creating a metaphor for his facial abnormality."

Carpenter designed the original book cover and his main concept was to stick to the main idea of suggesting Auggie's appearance being important but to not suggest why that is. This is relevant to the brief as Penguin likes simplistic concepts that aren't too abstract and Carpenter shows this as he chooses a simple concept such as appearance and approaches it in a unique but understandable way. The concept of the book cover needs to be understood once the book is read if not immediately understood.

Carpenter's approach to children books is very illustrative. As I don't want to approach the book cover with an illustrative eye, elements to take from his concepts are

• Bold typefaces - serifs are a common choice however they are made less serious with the use of bright colours and happy illustrations to numb down the serious tone. The type is almost never a consistent size on the book cover - the alternating of sizes allows for a more playful tone.
• Bright colours - this is usually a very common approach to children books as it suggests happier tones, and it generally more attractive as it's instantly eye-catching and interesting to the brain.
• Layout - Carpenter's typographic layouts usually follow one rule that is contrasted with an alternation to create the sense of playfulness. For example, the text will be fixed on a line (curved or straight) and then contrasted by typography that is fixed and on an opposite line. 

Gary Card and Jacob Sutton

 These books designed for a Penguin book series have a really interesting practical process as the images weren't originally intended for use in the book. Two students took these photos in their bedroom and didn't have a plan for it. (https://www.grafik.net/category/covershot/wild-card) These serve as inspiration for possible 10 minute photos that I could explore if I carried on with that idea.

• Photography - the way the props were made are very effective to creating a sense of urgency and honestly as they look like quick paper maches that were just thrown onto the model however it almost merges into the person's face and creates a new character. Our sense of a normal black and white photo of a person is completely altered to match the item attached to them and their anonymousity becomes more apparent. 
• Typeface - the text in these is what interests me the most as they match the handmade element of the photographs and create a sense of this being children playing dress up with the childlike, handwritten font which is conveyed through altering uppercase with lowercase, sans serif and the lack of a fixed structure. This all combines to create a playful and young typeface.