The Outsiders Progress 4

Because the text worked so well, I decided that I’d do the authors name in the same style:

Kind of looks like something from ‘The Shining’.

I liked this so much that I did all of the text for the book cover in the same style:

Played around with various ways of laying out text and images. The most difficult part was figuring out where about the tagline and authors name would go on the front cover, as the balance of the image often felt skewed, and I have a tendency to try and tuck the words into the image, which can sometimes work, but not always.

I also thought that the, while the white background works, it could be less plain, and so I did add some lined paper in the background, originally with the poem ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’, which is referenced in the book, partly visible as written on the other side of the paper, but I felt that it detracted from the impact of the rest of the cover, so I removed it.

I am slightly worried that the cover could be mistaken a horror story with very few tweaks to its design, but I believe that that the gritty feel is worth it. The simplicity of the design is, I feel, a real achievement, and I really feel that the face on the front is dramatic enough to work as its own image: