GOAl
The most prominent symbol used on the cover of a Hamlet book is a skull. In fact there are almost no other symbols used on previously published covers. I thought this was a missed opportunity so I set out to create a new book cover for my one of my favorite Shakespearean plays.
IDEATION
The metaphor of a skull has become a symbol for the play, but why has it stopped there? There are many striking metaphors in the story that could be recognized as motifs and themes; poison, the earth, the crown, or ghosts. I took to looking through old black and white bitmap advertisements in search for dark metaphoric imagery.
Bitmap ad page 1
Bitmap ad page 2
Bitmap ad page 3
Bitmap ad page 4
Bitmap ad page 5
CONCEPTUALIZATION
I was now finding that the textures, scanned in at high quality, were very apparent and visually interesting at a larger scale. They gave the images a gritty feeling, matching well with the gritty story.
I found very interesting images that held metaphorical meaning within the story, and red was sparingly used to reference blood. In one draft I pieced together smaller parts of pictures to create a larger texture which I thought was an interesting direction as it added depth and another level of interaction. Of the many symbolic images, the most effective was a drill bit that was broken. It resembles a crown but is clearly a piece of machinery with wear. Within the wear on the crown there are dark shapes that resemble a skull.
Photomontage 1
Photomontage 2
Photomontage 3
Photomontage 4
Photomontage 5
Photomontage 6
FINAL BOOK COVER
Hamlet is an iconic story. I used negative space to draw the eye to relatively small text for a title, and treated it so it looks worn or faded, and blend in with the texture of the background and image. It almost looks like a ghost or a secret being told, and there are many secrets in the story of Hamlet.
The rest of the text was treated similarly, slightly beat up to match the feeling of old resources or corrupted images being used. The spine shows the title itself broken up. This is done to capture the attention of a passerby who would read the name to make sense of it.
PROMOTIONAL POSTER
The promotional poster is heavily textured. The large letters of the title on the left are falling downwards, leading the viewers eye towards the book cover at the bottom.
PROMOTIONAL POSTER