Growing up, my favorite book series to read was Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events – because of this lifelong fascination with the story and characters within the thirteen-book series, I wanted to take a stab at redesigning each of the individual dust jackets. It may be obvious to most, but A Series of Unfortunate Events is designated towards a younger audience and their traditional covers depict this; each cover consists of colorful illustrations and whimsical typefaces that highlight a major part of the story. I challenged myself to transform these into a more minimal or adult centric design.
Forgoing the whimsical typefaces on the original designs, I replaced all text elements with a bold and strong typeface that speaks to the heavy nature of the events within the series; by using a more uniform and larger font, the title of each book jumps off the page. The focal point of each cover is an illustration of one main event per book displayed front and center; these illustrations are cleaned-up revisions of what already exist within the pages of the original series, paying homage to the artistic direction they held. Additionally, the colors distinguishing the spines of each book from one another have been incorporated into the number on each cover.
Lastly, the design element that may not be apparent when holding each individual book separately is that as the story line progressively becomes darker so does the background of the dust jackets. Starting off as a light gray, each cover becomes gradually darker until the last in the series is a rich black color. When lined up as a complete series, the spines form a unique gradient from start to finish.
Comments