'What a Carve Up!' Book cover design
The design of the book cover features broken VHS cassete-style effects, both on image as well as type. It is a link to the broken and dysfunctional family and the main character’s obsession with watching ‘What a Carve Up!’ over and over again. The spine looks as if it has the title of the book handwritten on it, almost like a label would have on an old VHS tape, making it more personal and mysterious. Therefore, everytime the reader pulls the book off the shelf to read it, it almost seems as if s/he is about to put the film on.
I decided to use a quite a mysterious photograph of Margaret Thatcher on the front cover, not only due to the fact that she was one of the political subjects discussed in the book, but also is an undeniable symbol of power, relating to the Winshaw family status. Her iconic and symbolic pearls (yet another relation to power) were made very visible and a significant part of the composition.
