Agatha Christie Book Cover

BOOK COVER

For this study task we had to create a book cover for the live brief of the agatha christie 125th birthday, we got given a title and had to create the design for it. I got given 'Evil under the Sun' so i first goggled the plot and its history to get a idea of the themes and ideas in the book.

PLOT SUMMARY 

'Hercule Poirot is called in to investigate a case for an insurance company regarding firstly a dead woman's body found on a moor and then a important diamond sent to the company to be insured turns out to be a fake. Poirot discovers that the diamond was bought for Arlena Marshall by Sir Horace Platt and Arlena is on her honeymoon with her husband and step-daughter on a tropical island hotel. He joins them on the island and finds that everybody else starts to hate Arlena for different reasons - refusing to do a stage show, stopping a book, and for having an open affair with Patrick Redfern, another guest, in full view of his shy wife. So it's only a matter of time before Arlena turns up dead, strangled and Poirot must find out who it is... ' 
                                  via http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083908/plotsummary

Main clues - (IDEAS FOR IMAGERY)

Bath cap
Bottle
Bath
Wristwatch
Diamond
Perfume

THEORY

Next i googled book design theory and found this article, this was to give concept and ideas to my cover and to see how existing covers work, the ideas of hoe to attract an audience without given away too much of the plot.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2012/aug/16/book-cover-theories-edinburgh-festival

The main ones i felt were relevant to my theme are; zoom theory, association theory, obfuscation theory, zen theory.

ZEN THEROY : i felt this would work best as it s aswell know book by a very famous author so it doesn't need to be explained in much detail to attract people, the title and fame will do this. I felt keeping it simple, basic and clear would give the reader more surprise and interest into the story before they open the book. This would only work for a author of this fame though as people will buy it because of her name and history from first look, they don't need to know too much of the plot before reading into it.


EXSITING COVERS

i also looked into covers of the book that had already been create so i could see the main imagery and factors that they all included to see if i wanted to work with these.

FEATURES : bold text, text the main focus point, sells because of author, simple designs, images around beach/holidays, selling point the author name, sans serif font, TYPE IMPORTANT.

from my research i discovered my first idea of creating the book cover as writing on a postcode already exists, this stubbed me abit and i thought of using a boarding pass but decided to pick another design idea instead as i wanted mine to be original and this was too similar.

POSTCARD IDEA SIMPLE MOCKUP

just the text

ZEN/MIND GAME IDEA

this is the idea i chose as my final idea, its simple and bold but cause the audience to think and use its mind like the books do. Its a interesting cover that will appeal to a smarter audience that appreciate the joke but is so obvious i feel it will make people saw 'OOOOH' when they get it, this is the same feel when Poirot revels the murder so i feel it fits this book well. i used a serif font contrasting to the research into existing book cover as i feel its an older more traditional book seen as a classic these days and this reflects this better.

this is the simple idea, i experimented with colour and a blood drop as the full stop in the first idea but felt this looked to sinister for a holiday murder book, it look more like a vampire book so i picked the simple basic ideas as my final one.

FINAL COVER

SUBMISSION

i then added it to the guardian webpage with the ideas.

cover on the page: