Poster Design--Richard III

Do you know the classic tale of England's King Richard III as told by Shakespeare? No? Well, many people don't actually (even though it is purportedly his most popular play). Essentially it's about how through manipulation and greed, one can both gain everything and lose everything (the "one" here being the ol' king himself).

pen and ink

Book Cover Redo

We were asked to take an existing book and come up with a new book jacket. The styles and specifications were pretty open, so I elected to go back to scratchboard, something I haven't done since high school. I actually decided to use this approach before I picked the book I wanted to do.

As you can hopefully tell from looking at the image, the book I chose is Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, which is essentially a twist on the classic Jungle Book story. Although I own and love the book, the cover always irked me a bit. I liked the colors and everything (although the artist's style without and within the book were a tad out there for my tastes), but I just didn't think it communicated the idea of the book as as whole. So with that in mind, I tried thinking of the best--or at least a more effective--way of giving the viewer a glimpse of what's inside...

*[Keep in mind that this image is actually for the entire jacket, meaning it's intended to be wrapped around from front to back.]

Of course it was only after I was close to finishing that my brother pointed out some of the original cover's subtlety (i.e. there's actually a boy's profile in the shadow running up against the gravestone), making my version close to moot. Whatever.

Original Cover Art by Dave McKean