To Kill A Mockingbird Book Cover

Initial Ideas

I studied this book at school but that was ages ago so i skimmed sections of the book and watched the film to familiarise myself with it again. I was initially considering physical objects and scenes that occur in the book but didn’t like how obvious and cliche the outcomes were looking.

 

I liked the idea of feathers floating down the cover as if a bird had been shot (out of the frame) and this was the aftermath. I then thought about merging this shot noise with a judge’s hammer to represent the court case and themes of injustice. 

I still thought this was a little obvious so thought about how I could use just the feathers to represent a concept in the book. 

Developing a Concept

I researched and drew the mockingbird feather. It is black white and grey and I thought this connected well the the themes of racism in the book. The black and white divide was extremely strong in the time when this book was written. I played around with this idea until I arrived at the idea of using three feathers to show a hopeful transition for society. 

The first of these feathers (left) is black and white and represents a fully segregated society. The last one (right) is purely grey and represents and entirely integrated and peaceful society. 

The feather in the middle is the feather of a mockingbird and is the middle ground between the two. It represents a gradual change in attitudes and actions that this book begins to recognise. Although there is such a strong racial divide in the book, certain characters like Atticus have the opinion that blacks and whites are equal. 

Roughs

I wanted this concept to span the whole cover so I used the basic pattern of the mockingbird feather to design the back cover. 

For the feathers I wanted to incorporate collaged newspaper as the grey elements. A story is told in one of the first few chapters about Boo Radley cutting up newspaper, stabbing someone in the leg with scissors and then continuing with what he was doing. Using newspaper will also represent the spreading of information, a lot of idle chat occurs between certain characters in the book. This and the spreading of rumours is what spreads fear and hate for the mockingbirds of the story. 

I did a quick search to check the internet for similar designs using feathers and couldn’t really find anything so this is a good sign! 

Experimentation

I used ink to start drawing feathers. I was using a brush and didn’t like how controlled the lines looked. I wanted something looser and more expressive. I used the end of the paintbrush instead and was much happier with the outcomes. They looked more sketchy and frantic. I also did some mark marking to overlay over any of my images. I’m not sure whether I will need these or not yet.

Text

I used the end of a paintbrush again to create this type. I like how childlike it looks, I think this is relevant as the story is told through a child’s eyes and there is a strong theme of innocence running through the book.  

Layout

I created some digital layout mockups using my scanned drawings. I asked for feedback from my peers on these and the most popular were the third and fourth design on the top row. I am not sure about the third one because I find it awkward that the title is aligned to the right, I feel it makes it harder to read the words in the right order. I am going to go ahead with the the fourth one and might play around with scale. 

I created a mockup for the full jacket too, I like how the back cover looks as it is a good contrast to the front but still connects well. 

Drawing

I re-drew the feathers until I was happy with at least one of each. I made my ‘newspaper’ collages on separate sheets to combine on Photoshop. This would mean my line work was smooth as it wasn’t going over uneven layers of paper. Instead of newspaper I used photocopied pages from the book itself. When the design is finished, the text will be too small to be legible so as long as it looks like the it doesn’t really matter. 

I also drew some of the letters again for the title as I wasn’t happy with how all of them looked, and wrote Harper Lee’s name all in lower case to fit in with the childlike aesthetic. 

Colour

Most of the previous covers I saw had been quite muted so I wanted to so something a little more eye catching and bright. I was torn between the pale yellow and the pale blue so I asked for opinions from quite a few people and received a very mixed response. 

• The yellow shows the heat of the deep south in the summer. 
• The blue is a generally nice colour which might appeal to people before they have even noticed what book it is, it’s popular at the moment.
• They yellow makes the feathers look like bananas. 
• The blue is a bit cold, might not be relevant enough to the story. 

Final Design and Evaluation

The submission requirements said to separate the cover and present this alongside the entire cover spread including crop marks. 

Positives

I am glad I sent time to carefully consider things like layout and colour and also ask for opinions of others. I asked my peers in the studio but also asked my ‘non-creative’ friends who would potentially fit the target audience for the book, for their feedback too. 

I feel like this is quite a bold design for me. I tried to play to my strengths using black and white and one colour and I feel it has been successful. 

I am happy with how the type has turned out. Type is not my forte so choosing to do this was a bit risky but I really like the effect it has had and how it connects to my drawings. 

Negatives

I feel like I spent too long on the design for the overall simplicity of it, but maybe this is just me expecting too much of myself in a short amount of time. 

The text from Capote on the back could do with a little more breathing space.