Christmas research tasks

Over the past three weeks I have been completing the xmas research tasks for my given book covers. After deciding on my three covers and commencing with contextual research during the first week, I progressed to the work task. The word task involved restricting designs for each book to a Microsoft work document. The restriction was actually a lot more enjoyable than I had expected and I produced some pieces that I am very happy with. Boiling each book down to just key words or phrases and then visually representing them using the limited tool selection seemed very complicated at first, however after a while it became clear that some of the more simple ideas were actually the most affective, such as the designs for frog and toad and design as art (bellow). I think typography should play a large part in my covers due to its ability to express quirks of design that at time images cannot.

Another task involved limiting myself to Microsoft excel, which proved harder to visualise than word I would say as in excel you're always left with a disjointed bitmap image that I felt didn't fit any of my books very well. However the task wasn't without merit as I created some nice character faces as inspired by Bruno Munari. The abstract forms have a nice aesthetic by my main concern is everything being so 2D meaning I can't visualise it looking very good on a cover. There is however definitely some experimentation to be done.

Another task involved visualising a piece of music connected to each book via illustrator. The first piece I illustrated was for the orchestral composition of Peter and the Wolf. The song tied in with Frog and Toad, due to its almost dream like composition and the traditional fairy tail nature. Doing these experiments helped to form ideas of the type of lines and forms that best represent the books.

Another task involved collecting objects that are linked to each book. I gathered cookies for frog and toad due to their involvement in the book, a wooden spoon for Munari, inspired by the essay on form and a rubiks cube for Paul Klee due to its visual similarity with his paintings. These free objects give a whole new dimension to my idea generation. The possibility of photographic them in a narrative style interests me and shall be explored further.

I feel confident about my research so far and just need to get on with some solid idea generation for the crit on Friday.