Agatha Christie's - 'Endless Night' 1.0

Agatha Christie has sold over 2 million copies of her books. She was an English crime novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her work consists of 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections and a plethora of these have been made into a TV series/film. The Guardian are celebrating 125 years of Agatha Christie novels and have set up a brief to redesign a book cover for any of her books. The book that I'm going to redesign the cover for is titled 'Endless Night'. Christie's most famous characters include Poirote and Miss Marple. 'Endless Night' was randomly chosen so I am yet to read/watch it, however I have seen some of the TV episodes. It was written towards the end of Christie's career, touching on a ghost story interwoven in the crime. 

Useful source: https://knowingchristie.wordpress.com/2013/07/20/notes-on-endless-night/

Previous Book Covers:

1967

2007

Immediate Response:

Both covers use red in their colour palette to portray death. I personally prefer the cover from 1967 because the large bold text and contrasting colour is simple and doesn't distract the audience. It's interesting to see how the more recent cover has more imagery and the title of the book and author has swapped places. It seems that now she's become a best selling novelist, her name is just as important as the title. 

Influential Concepts From Book:

• ‘The Towers,’ a non-inhabitant old ruin, which the villagers call 'Gypsy’s Acre'. 
• Book based around folklores and superstition - Curse on Gypsies
• A lovers’ tale: Ellie and Michael settle down in their dream house.
• Families don't want them to marry.
• Accidents begin to occur and eventually, Ellie goes missing.
• Motive for Murder: Wealth
• 'A sweet girl who is in love. An orphan with a lot of money. A sensible business woman who needs a friend.'
• Poison
• 'Praised as one of Agatha Christie's most unusual forays into gothic, psychological suspense, this novel of fate, chance, and the nature of evil was a personal favourite of the author's as well.' - Quote from Christies Fan Blog which is a really useful source as it summarises the plot, twists and clues in the books. This was a trustworthy source to use because it isn't opinionated and states fact. 

Initial Ideas:

Instead of experimenting with type to begin with, I sketched out some concepts that were inspired by the information I found out about the book. I want to concentrate more on the layout of the book, making sure I associate text, image and colour harmoniously. 

'The Towers' are an important feature in the book, the opening chapter puts them into context as a formidable place that is cursed. I thought I could use the sides of buildings and focus on the angles to create an abstract representation of a building. 

Poison is a prominent theme throughout the book so I thought I could use that as a symbol in the centre of the cover. I thought I could use a potion bottle as it's an aesthetically pleasing shape and I could even add the title of the book onto the bottle. 

Started thinking about layout of the cover in order so that I could establish if the type needs to be able to work on a large or small scale. 

Josef Müeller-Brockmann 

Müeller-Brockmann was a Swiss graphic designer who is renowned for his simple designs and clean use of typography. I read part of his book so that I could see what his theories and techniques are for a successful layout:

The relationship between margins and their proportions 'can have a marked influence on the impression created by a page of print. If they are too small, the reader feels the page is overfull'. I really like how Mueller-Brockmann thinks about how the book will look and feel in a persons hand. If the margins are too big, the information will be a lot smaller and could be harder to read. However, I think it could create a focal point to an image or certain word. If the margin is too small, the text/image can go too close to the sides which risks the audience covering up the text with their hands when they hold the book. Mueller-Brockmann uses grids to sort work from:

This is a useful technique because he can reuse his templates to create more consistent work and also make his time more efficient. When I was reading the book it was really interesting to see where the grid should go on the page and for what purpose. 

Penguin

Renowned publisher Penguin have created iconic book covers in design. Edward Young was a young British graphic designer when he created the first penguin book cover. 

Young created the first template for the penguin book covers. I like how it is divided into three sections which breaks the composition up and makes the information easier to read. The clarity and simplicity doesn't distract the audience from the information about the book but is still appealing.

Jan Tschichold took over from Young but didn't change much of the original layout:

1950 edition created by Tschichold. He made the grid layout more consistent and introduced the Gill Sans typeface which are very subtle changes but I like how the original concept was kept because it's successful and made the cover more iconic. The colour scheme of the book is dependant on the genre of book, this objective colour palette was taken forward in 1962, by Romek Marber as he used a monochromatic image: 

I prefer the previous layout and colour scheme because Marber has changed the divide using colour and used line instead. I like the concept but I think it could represent the brand more effectively if it was subtle. The new grid allows more room for imagery and I like how the cover is more visual. 

I used Photoshop/Illustrator to see if I could create some rough drafts of my ideas because I could work from my drawings and create accurate representations:

This year, The Guardian is celebrating 125 years of Agatha Christie so I decided to use the serif typeface; Athelas for her name because it's a classic, traditional styled font. I used a deep shade of red to connotate the murder and passion in the book. Used Helvetica Bold in upper case because I felt the structure was solid and helped to draw the eye diagonally from the circle to the bottom corner. I chose to use a matt black because it's a lexis in the title and the white circle represents the moon. I didn't want to centre the shape because I didn't want to immediately go with a safer option. I aligned the text to the right so that it was balanced. 

I want my book cover to be suggestive of a figure because of the 'paranormal' theme of the book. I thought I could use the cropped figures and and layer them to create a ghostly, disjointed figure.

I used Photoshop to manipulate the image because I am more experienced with the software:

Endless Night was one of Christie's favourite books and was themed on superstition and almost paranormal activity. I wanted to use layered figures, all with different opacities to signify a ghostly figure. I added some geometric lines to suggest 'The Tower'. I really like the tones of grey layered over each other. The soft tones make an interesting composition that subtly suggests a figure. This would intrigue the reader and would start to make sense once they start to read the book. I chose to use Bodoni bold because it's a very old type face.This minimalist cover is similar to Michael Morris' cover for 'Dying' in 1979: 

I decided to use the same layout as Morris because I like the simplicity. It's predominantly image based which focuses the attention to the intriguing, graduated figure. The type is confined to the top right hand corner which is simple but I like the bold title and regular author because it makes it balanced and also reflects the graduated tone of the image.

I decided to change the serif typeface to Helvetica because I think it balances well with the curved and layered shapes from the image. I think this will make it easier to read. Like Morris, I decided to make the title bold so that it was more of a focal point. I decided to make 'Agatha Christie' smaller and tighter because although this celebrates Christie as an author, the purpose of a book cover is to state the title of the book. Penguin covers influenced me to separate the image and text with a simple line. This simple grid system divides the composition. I do think this is relevant because the typography and imagery have been floating on the page and this give the type a sense of place. 

Experimented further with layering the shapes because I felt the bottom left section was empty. I removed the line on the top right because I wanted to see what the image would look like if it was curvaceous and no straight line. I asked which figurative image people preferred and I got very balanced feedback as their was a 50/50 split between the two. I like this composition because the imagery takes up more room and I like the gap between on the bottom left hand side as it creates a bit of negative space. 

As an informed decision, I wanted to create a ghostly effect to reflect the themes in the story. I decided to use both designs and layer them over each other, this gave the sense of the figure walking as the blur suggests movement. I then multiplied the layers to make the tones darker and increased the opacity subtly which created even more tones and hints of figures. 

I aimed to keep the composition as simple as I could. I didn't move away from monochromatic colour scheme but considering the few hours I had to complete the brief, I didn't want to overcomplicate the designs. If I was going to put this design into context, I would really like to have it printed on thick, textured, maybe off white paper. It would be interesting to see if the design would work as a screen print. 

Uploaded my book cover to The Guardian website:

This was a good opportunity to experience the process of uploading my designs online and to see my design on the internet: 

Michael Morris was a huge influence to me on this project because it gave me confidence to keep the type simple and have most of the focus on the figure.