Initial ideas

  At the beginning, I sketched some initial ideas of my book cover design, they were all inspired by the previous book cover. Basically, I wanted to pick some main objects from the story and put into the book cover, such as the red sock or a book. As the story begins in the age of 13 3/4 which means almost 14 years old. Hence, I looked at the style of some 14 years old children’s handwriting, most of the handwriting looks messy and curvy. And then I got an interesting idea, wrote directly on the cover so that it looks alike a personal typeface as the book is Adrian’s personal diary, as a result it looks more like a personal diary. Also, as this was my first time to read the book, I didn’t fully understand
about the story but I know about the characters from the book, and I wanted to create a story line so I listed all characters and the relationship between them and Adrian. During the crit, someone suggested me could put into the red sock which would be interesting, so I made a red sock with all the characters and the relationship with Adrian into the red sock, as the story begun in the age when Adrian was 13 3/4 and ended when he was 15, I put both number on the top and at the bottom. Afterward, I made some mock-up with my ideas, I made one of my designs with all handwriting typeface which totally look alike a personal diary but I wasn’t sure if I should put the boy or not. Moreover, in the story, Adrian strongly believes he is an intellectual so I designed the book to put in the cover with some lines which represent the paper of the diary. One mock-up was too similar with the previous book cover so I didn’t really like that, it was the one used glasses in the cover, as I know, the glasses only appeared in the tv series which didn’t appear in the book.

  Basically, I just wanted to keep my design look simple because I always worked too complex in the past and most of the feedback that I got were asked me to work simpler which can even work better than a complex design.