Designing the Cover Pt 1

I wanted a different feel for the cover than I did for the inside illustrations - the intention of the illustrations inside are to set off a deep unease however the cover needs to grab eyes and draw people to at least pick up the book that they are projecting. I did still want to look at how to convey a sense of unease, so I decided early on any illustrations on the cover would have loose linework to present lack of control - maybe even mystery.

I wanted to use one of the more well known characters from the necronomicon - Cthulhu; anyone vaguely interested in mythology and the occult should know about Cthulhu, and if they do not already own a copy it may spur them to but one. First, I needed to establish what I wanted to draw - this itself was easy, I wanted to hint at Cthulhu without outright placing an image of it on the cover, so using tentacles was my best bet. I made sure that I was able to draw them before proceeding further.

I tested the colours as well - red, an eye catching colour but one that also signifies danger. The black stood out very well against it. I felt that the other colours clashed too much, and that the blue was more calming than eye catching. I tried different markers - plain staedtler markers and pro markers. I preferred the staedtlers to create the scratchy effect. I mocked up four thumbnails - it was at this point I decided to create each aspect individually and piece it together on photoshop; this way, mistakes were easily fixed and experimentation was much easier to conduct especially in terms of composition.

My first choice was originally the one shown above, however I felt it was too chaotic and dragged the viewers' eye to the skull rather than the title - which was the most important aspect of the book cover. I decided to fall upon a much simpler design - a singular tentacle with the skull.

I chose the typography to match the style of the background - very clearly handwritten and mildly chaotic. I went on to design the spine in the same fashion, adding black lines to the spine to give the impression of old iron book binding. It was at this point that I moved onto photoshop to put the pieces together.