Mock up of a die-cut cover for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, designed and illustrated by Karine Hall, 2015.
University project:
My brief was to create a new cover for The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, a well-known novel published in 1994–1995 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami.
This cover is a die-cut where the first image is a Japanese bird sitting in a blossom tree, connotating joy, spring and life. Underneath the cut and thought the square of a Japanese screen, the reader can make out a dark ghostly figure, representing the spirit in the well in the novel.
I have tried to recreate through this layering of meanings a third meaning pertinent to the story: a strange, surreal world where things are not what they seem.
Cutting process of the top image, to allow the secondary image of the spirit in the well to come through.
The big reveal... What lurks behind this picture of gentle happiness?
