Penguin Book Covers : Animal Farm
Two book cover designs that I created for a live brief set by Penguin Books. One of the competition's categories was redesigning the cover for "Animal Farm" by George Orwell.
As a fan of minimalism within Visual Communication I tried coming up with a cover that would send a customer quick information about the book without giving too much away, I had to build interest so that anyone passing by would be intrigued and enquire about what the book could be about.
The first cover I produced for this brief way a pretty minimalistic outcome. I wanted to grab anyone's attention if they were passing by. This is why I used obvious and not so obvious visual clues within the cover to tease the narrative. Animal Farm is a story where the main Antagonists (the pigs) end up commanding the society of the farm animals in an effort to live life different to how their human farmer would look after them. However what ends up happening is that through Narcissism and their own depiction of themselves the pigs imitate their previous masters role. Thus becoming humanlike in that regard, this is why we see a transition of trotters to human footprints. I am showing the pigs gradual journey toward becoming 'human.'
The colour choice was based purely on Bold and bright palettes to help the book stand out in the advertising environment it would find itself in. Additionally you could relate the strong colours of black and yellow to your stereotypical hazard warning label communicating the menacing nature of the plot within this book. Animal Farm teaches us that being in charge is not as easy as it looks if you are trying to create a truly equal society. Readers should be careful not to be inspired by the pigs in this book.
Finally the second cover is a bit more of a complex design visually but thats almost all it is. On the back cover we have illustrations of a Windmill and Farmhouse, two buildings that are mentioned within the story of Animal farm.
The rolling hills represent the environment in which this story takes place. Being on a farm you would imagine that the area around it would be rural and found within the countryside. We relate rolling hills with the countryside and so there is the connection and reason I made to include this within the book design.
This time the colour scheme was a bit more considered. The shades of red reflect the underlying communism theme the book has the entire way through the narrative. Red also represents danger and the pinks are the colour of the main antagonists (the pigs.)
