This week's question:
Where do you draw your inspiration? What is the process? And please post 3 creatively designed book covers and why you chose them.
Perhaps it's because I work in marketing/communications, but the very first thing I do in my "creative process" is to identify my audience and how they will be interacting with my design piece.
- Are they young, old, female, male, where do they live?
- What colors, shapes, or symbols have particular meaning (or unintentional meaning) for this particular subset of the population?
- Where will they see this piece and how long do I have to get their attention with it? (e.g. is it a billboard? a magazine cover? an ad? a book cover?)
The second thing (and equally as important) is to familiarize myself with my design piece, or "client." For example, reading the articles/books you are laying out, or, at the very least, reading a detailed synopsis and read about the author. If you're designing for a company, or a group of people, be familiar with their history, their mission, what is important, and what they are trying to accomplish.
Know your competition. What will my design piece be competing with? How do I make it stand out? Ensuring that your design piece doesn't end up looking like a poor copy of your client's rival, or perhaps it resembles a rival design that conjures up the wrong message.
Get out all of your ideas, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and develop them as far as they will go... and then let them go. It doesn't mean that this isn't an awesome idea, it just doesn't fit this particular project. Know when to throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Don't be afraid to ask people their opinion -- Facebook is great for this. Someone might point out a hidden meaning in your design that didn't even occur to you. "Um, yea this is great, but did you realize that the negative space on your design looks like a huge penis?" You'd of never known if you didn't ask!
It's ok to copy, er um, borrow. There is nothing new under the sun. In design, we "borrow" from other designers. It is what it is. Don't outright plagiarize, and always makes your design unique and different, but definitely draw your inspiration from other designers.
RESIST ALL URGES TO DECORATE. It's hard...but as Amy says, if there isn't a reason for it, don't do it.
I haven't read this series of books, but I'm in love with the design for several reasons -- the colorful color palette, the consistency of "Will Self's name" -- the playful typgraphy used for the titles, and how the titles interact with the limited graphics. http://will-self.com/category/books
