Quotes that provided Inspiration...
"The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern..."
"Our normal state of mind is continually calculating the relationships between things, measuring, and analyzing..."
"Profounder Significance"
"Spatial relationships had ceased to matter"
Huxley reported that under the influence of mescaline, Place, time and distance ceased to matter very much. Looking at his watch but realizes it exists "in another universe" because he has discovered what it means to live in a perpetual present.
My intention was to capture this "perpetual present" and show a distorted sense of reality that doesn't make much sense, but still shows the perception, and significance of the relationship between aspects of life.
I sketched up a few ideas for the front of my book cover designs with what I imagined when reading through the book. There are certain aspects that I wanted to recreate and produce for the front cover. This front cover would work with aspects of a bookshelf but distort the outcome, the significance of a bookshelf would be present but the use of negative space and the altering of colours and direction to provide a distortion.
Initial Idea: Bookshelf distortion
I decided to take some pictures within the library to capture some aspects of books within a shelf and maybe taking some of these compositions into some of my edits.
Capturing these panoramic shots give the illusion and distortion that I had imagined for the shelf. It recreates in my opinion the colour and alteration to
REDESIGN
After experimenting with the bookshelf and looking into different ways of portraying a book cover within a design, I decided to experiment with the idea of creating some sort of book "inception" taking the book cover, and repeating it within itself. This concept is much stronger as I believe it questions the book further and plays with the quote "Profounder significance". With this Profounder (penetrating or entering deeply into subjects of thought or knowledge;having deep insight or understanding) significance aspect in my mind, I wanted to represent this with a repeat of the same design that leads viewers in and draws them into the book.
Second Idea: Book Repeat
With the experimentation with colour and the way it is positioned on the first repeat, will give me an interesting composition. I need to make sure that the design is obvious in the way it repeats itself.
I produced a template to show where the next repeat would go, and started to mock up various experiments to see the final outcome. After experimenting with this template, I decided to change the way the layout was positioned and give it a slight rotation.
The slight rotation provides an inward curve that provides a visual stairway into the centre of the design. It leads people into the design to represent the bookshelf that led huxley into deep contemplation.
Upon completing these designs I was given the idea that its aesthetic had some resemblance to the Tame Impala cover, or even the saul bass vertigo poster that has a vector repeat within the design.
I created my frame and colour aspects to my design in illustrator. The frame provides the negative space for the next repeat, making each rotation between the repeat accurate and gradual.
I like the layout of the type as it provides a gradual rotation that will occur when the design is repeated yet it is still readable for a good section of the repeat untill the type gets too small to read, yet the colour of the font is still present and symbolic.
This shows the final repeat. I need to finalise my colour choices and start development on a back page.
Colour Development
After designing my book cover I came to the conclusion I needed to edit and experiment with my colours and understand what will be the 2 colours, and what will be picked for the stock. Below is a gif of various colour experiments.
I really liked the aesthetic created from the colours, I believe they worked effectively and well together. One problem with this edit is the aspect of colours. It includes 3 different colours without any stock. This needs to be changed as the mandatory requirement is to include 2 colors with a stock.
I started by finding some stocks that would be suitable to change and use as one of the designs. I picked colours that were already present within the design. Having the blue for the boxes that spiral inwards, and the yellow and red stock which are the steps into the spiral.
I colour matched the stocks and applied them to the design to give some sort of idea into what the design would look like with these stocks applied to the design.
I tested my design on different stocks by separating different layers and allowing stock to take certain parts of the design.
Below shows the stock with the colour printed on top.
FINAL COLOUR CHOICES
After experimenting with colour and not having much success, I decided to stay with my initial colour choice, I had no problems with this, however I realised I designed using 3 colours and forgot to leave a colour for the stock. Therefore with development, I found a stock that resembles the original yellow in my design, so using this will allow the same aesthetic as my design but with a 2 colour print with a stock as a base colour.
I mocked up a test to see how the design would look with the yellow as a replacement to the original to give a visual representation of what it will look like once printed. I also experimented with printing onto different stocks to understand what would work the best and which would be most successful. I found printing the orange onto the yellow was the only way to get the same aesthetic.
As I am printing on yellow stock, I need to remove each aspect of yellow that is situated within the design. Applying the magic wand to the yellow than pressing similar allows me to select all the yellow aspects and remove them giving a stencil for printing my final design onto.
This design is now ready to digitally print, with A4 cuts of my yellow stock then applying the print over the top provides the harshness of the red with a more subtle approach as the yellow tones down the design.
Back Page Development
