Navigating

Unfortunately blogger doesnt let me sort the posts in reverse order, so if you want to read this from the beginning and work your way from there you'll need to go to older posts and start from the oldest one and view it backwards :/

Final thought

I am very happy with how the set has turned out, much better than I thought they would considering my last attempt at this brief. I feel my designs serve the novels well, and the well suited paper is a happy bonus which adds that extra element to shelf appeal.

If I were to revise anything I would have liked to spend a bit more time on the back cover of the book, the layout could be cleaner, and I think the image of cormac McCarthy detracts from the overall weathered look because I left it untouched.

Voila!

So after a few tweaks in the print file I got it to where I wanted. For a final consideration I also bought some thin paper stock in hopes to create the feel of newspaper, and the paper held the ink surprisingly well which is a welcome change of luck when it comes to my printer.

texture

Hopefully the final consideration for this is texturing, this will be what makes or breaks the set in my opinion. If done right I hoped to add age to each piece depending on its setting. I grabbed some paper textures online and got to work with levels, the burn tool and some grunge brushes. and here is the final result:

(as a side note, despite The Road being set most recently, I added the most weathering to it because its set in a post apocalyptic theme, so I thought it would fir the book a lot more than doing a clean looking newspaper, and it's turned out to be my favourite)

Images

The typography and layout of the covers were done in illustrator, and because of such I couldn't add the final processed images to the covers yet, because dragged over from photoshop they don't preserve transparency which would prove to be a problem when adding the texture. I put the images in place in illustrator just to work the layout around them, but the final say for the images would be done in photoshop

Blurb and bio added

for the back cover I kept it fairly simple, I used a blurb of the book at the top, and a short bio of cormac mccarthy at the bottom.

cover typography

Next to recreate a newspaper look I needed something to write on the front cover, as well as some kind of print-publishing style layout.
Besides the header book title, I wrote sub headers to seem like a news story from events happening in the book, which also works quite well as a one sentence blurb I feel.
For the body copy I found quotes from the book, again another way to read into the book without revealing too much. I feel this could work quite well for any potential readers picking up the book on a shelf.

image prints

in continuing the image sourcing and processing for the newsprints, I moved on to Child of God, where I used an image of an old shack for the paper piece. If this was set in a year that relief prints were prominent I could have easily used my sketch, but it wasnt so I had to use a halftone style on another image I had sourced.

Next - No country for old men

The road

back to objects - relief prints

so now I am trying to make the objects look fitting to their respective print method. Blood meridian being the oldest in terms of setting the object used (scalping knifes) is made to look relief printed and quite rough

All the pretty horses uses a certain revolver that the character is trying to retrieve part way through the story, I tried to re-use my sketch, trace it on illustrator, colour it in but I couldnt make the sketch work well to the style, it just looked too clean. I found an ad for the gun printed that was quite rough, I ramped up the contrast and it turned out perfect

back to objects

Now I need to consider what, if any images I would place on to these newspapers. They need to add to the cover rather than just 'be there'. I am thinking about reconsidering some of the ideas from the first concept or even merging the two concepts, try to bring in the images of objects used to summarise the story.

If I am to use images I need to try and make them look like they are prints accurate to their time period. firstly starting with relief prints, bitmap and halftoned images and then digital and offset