This design for a new book about Deep Purple is almost finished, and in the end follows the publishers’ previous book about the group. I personally always like a series and find that once a couple of books match up it generates an irrational urge to complete a set (hence my love of Ladybird books I suppose, they just look so great all together on a shelf). Yet coming to this project I did kick off by going for something a bit more stand out-ish, if only to prove to myself things did not have to follow on. Hence my first design (below), which went for a famous image of the burning Casino (from whence the song Smoke On The Water was suggested), but treated to look more like a vintage half tone and coloured up to give the idea of a fire. All the titling and information was kept in a narrow band across the front, a challenge which I always enjoy as it means spending time messing with type spacing, leading and all those other often forgotten skills which nobody else notices. And it works fairly well but did end up seeming more like a record sleeve than a book cover somehow. Plus the urge to try and match the previous book also began to nag away, so I thought I would edge that way and see what happened.
So version two (below) emerged, with the typographical block off the earlier one run across a full size group photo, itself treated to match that of the previous book. Which was easier said than done, as I can never recall which filters and layers I used. It didn’t really work, looking far too cut and paste in the end.
It was then pushed on with new type and started to come together as in the image below. For the background, I generated a layered image based on a lot of vintage concert adverts from the correct era, which was coloured up and then vignetted. Most of this cannot be seen in the end but enough is visible to give the reader a suggestion of what’s going on.
The cover work was then halted while I returned to the inside design, and then I could return to it some time later with a fresh eye and make a few more tweaks to the overall design. This included reuniting the text, losing some of the effects on the lettering and instead using a subtle shadow to help isolate this from the images. I also dropped in a small colour image of the fire to replace the sleeve, as the album title is already mentioned. The end result (at the top of the page) now has an overall colour palette which comes together and also some of the moodiness of the original album cover.
There are more details about the book itself on the publishers’ website.
The previous book cover is detailed on the site.
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