Penguin Design Award Project

Illustration Final Design

For this project we were tasked with rebranding the Penguin Classic, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'.


I was really enthusiastic about this project, as it gave me the opportunity to combine a variety of skills, illustration, typography and editorial/composition work. To begin with I started by looking at artists and design agencies that used a lot of illustration in their work. Some of the companies I chose to look at were New Future Graphic, Seen Studio and Invisible Creature.

The artists I covered were Olly Moss, Jason Munn and Robbie Porter. I tried to look at artists that used a variety of styles and techniques and then reflect upon them myself, commenting on the aspects I liked and I didn't like so that I could get a clearer idea for myself of which direction I was going to head in. It was also interesting to see what there illustrations were used for, from websites, to posters, album covers and editorial pieces and see how they approached each individual genre. 

I then generated ideas in a thought shower, thinking about the book's themes and expanding upon those. This helped me to develop a number of ideas of ways I could imagine and portray the books contents. Once I'd distinguished some of the clear ideas for imagery that I had in mind, I then began creating some initial sketches.

I was focussed on creating something quite simple but that symbolised a lot of the books themes. I was also interested in creating something which left a little mystery to the books contents. After looking at Olly Moss and Jason Munn, who create work for films, video games and bands respectively, I was impressed by their incredible imagination to create work which referenced the subject matter through witty and colourful illustrations that weren't only beautiful to look at, but were also very contemporary in their style.

I then took sketches that I liked and began to develop my favourite ideas digitally so that my thoughts and ideas could come to life a little more. Like every college project, its important that I show my digital skills that I have developed along the way, therefore I showed my use of the tools in Adobe Illustrator such as Reflection, Clipping Masks and the pen tool.

My two favourite ideas to develop were the idea of using a simple capsule illustration over and over and the more complex idea of using a cuckoo as the pupil of the eye with a wire mesh. 

I then began to take my ideas onto the next stage by placing them into book cover templates. I now had to think about colours, type and composition.

I was focused on creating an illustration that was simple and graphic, so the same principles had to apply to the other facets of the book cover. The title of the book is long, so that was a key obstacle to overcome; how I could show the title in a simple, elegant way. I tried a variety of typefaces, sans serif and serif fonts respectively. The same applied to the back cover, it had to be similarly elegant and simple.