By the time I entered University, I became an avid fan of Stephen King's books and its movie adaptations. "Carrie" was the gateway to my gradual interest in the horror genre. I remembered implementing a lot of King's elements into my art and design works, including a previous book redesign project where I chose "Carrie" as my reference. During my fourth and final year in school, our class was given a new project, where not only we produce just a simple book jacket, but we should be binding the cover unto blank sheets of paper to become a 6x9" sized physical book mockup.
My idea is to incorporate illustration, that mixes in the medium of pop art and comic book aesthetics. I also drew inspiration from unique film posters, where creators apply more creative and graphic look, instead of being photo manipulated just as how they are commonly manufactured. With these visual elements, I may be able to draw in a younger demographic (around the later teens to 20's), in which the majority would take a strong interest to the animated medium—whether it be anime, manga, cartoons, or comics. The three picks from my book series are famous Stephen King works: "Carrie," "The Shining," and "Firestarter." Each cover establishes a central character and a feature that is prominent to the events of the story—such as an enraged Carrie drenched in blood, Danny displaying his psychic, "Shining" ability, and a revenge-stricken Charlie surrounded by flames. Since these stories are classified as horror, I had to work on giving a frightening impression on the characters on each cover. Implementing eerie elements that are out of what is ordinary, such as a bloody woman, a child with glowing eyes and a bloodcurdling scream, and a youth overcome with rage as it seems like she is engulfed in the blaze.
When it comes to colour, I thought carefully on choosing pure saturation to accompany its graphic cartoon art, combined with colours attributed to the horror style, such as black or dark colour palette to set a grim atmosphere, reds to go for blood, yellows to symbolize fear and shock, and other complementary colours like orange and purple to create an interesting contrast to the whole cover.
When designing the text, I approached in a freestyle technique where the titles fit within the main characters' figures. The shape of each letter forms in a wriggling effect and an uneven proportion, in order to evoke this feeling of discomfort and tension, where the reader may be able to expect a hair-raising story when they open to the first page. The book spine portion is where consistency is needed to occur. Many of Stephen King's books always presented his name in the Impact type. I chose to retain this recognizable typeface into the spine. In the middle part shows his signature branding "stamp" to emphasize that story belongs to the famous author. Afterwards comes the title of the story where the font is in Century Gothic, applied colours that existed at the front. Opening into the interior pages, the main body type will be written in Garamond, while article segments found in some of the stories will be differentiated with Franklin Gothic Regular.
The process and the length of time to complete this project was one of the longest and most challenging works I have ever completed. The pressure was all the more present, since we have to make this physical copy as legitimate and presentable, taking mandatory procedures into implementing the table of contents, publishing credits, and the index found on the back pages. I took careful steps into constructing a refined work of art, as if I'm creating something that will be precious to me and shouldn't be sullied by rushed and reckless executions. This sentiment remains true to this day as this book series project resulted in one of my proudest achievements, displayed with confidence during the graduation show, and is now currently kept safely in my work drawer. I haven't felt this sense of fulfillment or to be deserving of a reward in my previous works until with this book series design project. I will forever cherish these books during my career as a designer, and I will strive to challenge myself more with these types of work in the years to come.