When I first started considering illustration as a career many moons ago, I wasn’t into books, so illustrating for publishing related work didn’t really interest me. However, over the last few years, this has shifted a lot, and I’ve gotten quite into reading. And I can confidently say that reading both fiction and non-fiction, has been incredibly beneficial for me. Naturally I feel it only makes sense that this translates into my work as well… so recently I finally started on a personal project that’s been on my agenda for blooming ages, and that’s to re-design and reinterpret alternative book covers for some of my favourite novels, with the aim of creating a small book cover portfolio to show publishing houses and authors in the hopes of being commissioned to create a cover!
I have quite a few ideas and plans in the works just from being inspired by books I’ve read, but I’m finding without the kick of motivation from a client or editor, progress is slow… However I’m happy to say the first design is done!
I went for ‘The Life of Pi by Yann Martel’ and instead of doing a design completely from my own interpretation, I more just replicated the existing cover in my own style, which isn’t necessarily very challenging or ground-breaking, but feels like an appropriate way to get the ball rolling! I also used a mock-up Photoshop file to showcase how it would look actually printed as a cover and it defiantly helps with my personal motivation, seeing how it might look in the real world! I’m hoping to continue on this trajectory and have more designs to pitch to publishers in the near future, watch this space :)
