OUIL503- In Cold Blood- Cover 1 Initial Ideas

I wanted to make my first cover for In Cold Blood really simple and graphic, as I think for book designs this generally works quite well. For me, the biggest part of the book is the mystery side of it, so I thought it important that I be quite ambiguous in the design and the concept behind it.

I wanted to focus on the blood, as this forensic side of the story is an integral part of it. My initial, and favourite idea was to have a few bold blood drops falling on the cover, I think this pretty much explains what the book is all about and would fit in with the bold and graphic aesthetic I was going for.

A simple blood drip icon is immediately recognisable to everyone in the world, and I wanted to play on that immediacy, which works well especially for a book cover.

I began by roughing out general layouts of the cover, focusing on where the symbols would sit and where the text would work around it. I though one large symbol in the centre of the cover would work better than lots of smaller blood spots as that could look quite messy and not clear.