Book Jacket Design

Challenge: Take a topic from a chapter of Megg's History of Graphic Design and create a book jacket design
Skills: Layout design, type pairing, copy writing, color theory, icon design
Product: A modern, aesthetically pleasing book jacket representing The Legend of Cangjie

Background Information
Cangjie is credited as being a legend and a hero within the Chinese culture. What did Cangjie do to receive such a prestigious title? The legend tells that with his four eyes, he observed waves, the wind through trees, the stars in the sky, and animal markings, and from these, developed the first known stages of written communication.

Design Process
What caught my eye about this legend was the concept of Cangjie having four eyes and finding inspiration to create written communication through nature. I started by creating the four eye icons and created pupils out of natural elements that Cangjie was said to have taken inspiration from.

From there, I found a color palette inspired by nature. I wanted green to be a supplementary color, so I found different hues that worked well with the muted blues and purples. The typeface was then chosen to complement the thick black lines in the eye icons. The two lines that span from the front of the book to the back represent the natural waves and patterns that occur in nature that eventually led to the development of written communication.