Existing Book covers

The best place to start this brief I felt was to look at existing book cover designs for James and the Giant peach and see what works and what doesn't. The book cover I designing celebrates the books 50th anniversary so it needs to be something special and unique which appeals to both children and adults buying for children. This blog post contains covers I don't like and I have looked at what I feel doesn't work to help me establish what not to include/design for my cover.

I am not sure on who designed this first cover, however I this cover is far too serious and aimed towards adults far more than children. The content of the book is not dark and serious its an adventure, story telling book for children on an evening, this cover looks scary and dark and does not match the content of the book. I feel the illustrator has forgotten about the audience when designing this cover which is something I need to be constantly aware of especially as I will be designing for people younger than myself.

The second cover is much more engaging and captures part of the story line however if you have never read the book, the seagull takes over the cover too much for me although its part of the story, there are more significant parts other than this which would emulate the giant peach more than the seagull carrying it. I do like that the illustrator hasn't focused on the peach but this could have been done much more successfully, as the gap here in my opinion is too far.

This is very different to the previous two covers, it is much more modern and focuses on the type, something the Penguin brief asks for. I really like the idea behind the image and type but the black and grey colours dont jump out at you and scream adventure and excitement, which for children is what the book is all about. I think when designing this cover colour is going to be a really important part in determining how successful my colour will be.

This book cover again is too dark and gloomy, there are dark and gloomy parts to the story but the cover for a children book should show this, it need to jump of the shelf and look interesting, again this cover is slightly too old for the target audience of the book. However I do feel with this book small changes of could could help improve this dramatically, the design is is nice but it is drowned by the dark colour scheme.

These are old book covers including the original by Quentin Blake, these cover seem to catch scenes from the book rather than the focus on a peach. Its hard for me to asses these because 10 years ago I probably would have like them, but now I don't I like modern simplistic front covers, not ones that are full of imagery telling you the story before you open it. However many children's books do follow this concept so perhaps its important for me to remember this as the book is firstly aimed at children and secondly adults.

I am not sure who illustrate this cover, it looks old but has modern qualities about it. It appear to follow the style of capturing a scene, however the way its been illustrates and the type is much more modern than the above designs. I am not overly excited about this design but I do like that the front cover isn't boxed and the illustration flows from back to front. I also like that the type they have used is very playful and illustrative in its self, this is they type of font I prefer to work with.

This is probably one of my least favourite covers, the content works but I don't like the block shapes and colour of the over all design, I feel more texture and depth is needed to bring it to life, it looks too digital for a book cover.

I like the idea behind this cover, but I don't think it has been executed well, the angle of the layout and type fails this book, if this were developed and the image working across the double spread the cover would work much better, especially as the characters are so close up, it almost looks as though too much is going on. The type is a really important part of the design and I need to concentrate on this as much as the illustrations, I don't this the illustrator has considered this in the above design.