The brief was to re-design a new special edition cover of Stephen King's The Shining. The main inspiration behind this design is the hidden horrors of the Overlook hotel. The dust jacket is designed to represent the appearance of the hotel's surface whilst the book cover highlights the elements of horror.
Both designs use the clock as the central focus. The change of time is meant to represent how the atmosphere of the hotel changes after midnight, when the 'unmasking' at the ball occurs and when the Torrence's understand that the hotel is definitely haunted by the past and not just playing tricks with their mind. The design uses symbolism to hint at certain occurrences and parts of the story such as the keys, which are the actual design of the key used for room 217 at the Stanley hotel, the hotel of which The Shining is based upon. The keyhole is cut out of the dust jacket to hint at the evil hiding under it's surface and to entice the reader to take off the dust jacket.
Within the design there are subtle leaves amongst the flourishes of a classy elevator door design that suggest the awareness of the topiary animals in the hotel's garden, but the book cover makes the reader aware their existence as the leaves under the title change to form the angry eyes of the lion.The keys change to mallets and a skull sits between them, which is based upon the skull and crossbones that Danny sees in his vision before arriving at the hotel and the weapon that Jack Torrence uses.
The flourishes are shaped like snakes mimicking the fears Danny has of the fire extinguisher and the patterned carpet that Wendy mentions that she thinks moves like snakes, it's also exploding outwards from the clock to hint at the ending of the book. The whole design is symmetrical and reflected as inspiration from the use of REDRUM in the story.