Tasks and assignments for Graphic design 1

I mostly worked on the module and course assignments this week. I also did the idea generation workshop and some of the Illustrator tutorials. I did not finish all of them, but I will focus more on AI this week, as the course assignment is (well) underway.

I found the idea generation practices surprisingly useful. I did a regular mind map and a morphological analysis.

I ended up with three sketches.

The first is supposed to be a 1920s woman that could be used to promote the fact that the novel has a different detective than the more famous books. She is young, female, upperclass, and very unlike Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. I am not happy with the drawing, but I think Lady Eileen could be depicted on the cover in some way.

The second idea is to promote the thriller aspects of the book, as well as the 1920s setting. The novel is different from other Agatha Christie books, in that it has international crime organizations, communist Russians, secret societies and foreign office employees as murder victims. It is not like the classic murder mysteries the author is famous for. I was quite happy with the car drawing, so I made a test cover with it which I think works quite well. It would stand out in the crime section of a book store.

The last sketch is my favorite. The idea is to make a floor plan that shows the crime scene. Like a mix of the board game Cluedo and the Marauder’s map from Harry Potter. I have developed this idea further and hope to use it for the course assignment.

After making the initial sketch, I removed the outlines and the «Ground floor» text and made it into a test cover in Photoshop. I am quite happy with it, and think it worked well once cleaned up.

After making the first test cover, I got the idea to make a path of small footprints through the house ending in a dead body. I also want to make the footprint path to «write» a number 7, which meant I had to redo the drawing. I did this in Procreate, and added the text in Illustrator. I think it works. It also adresses the feedback I got on forum, which was that it should include the number seven and consider the Gestalt principles. I still need to add the footprints, but I think the project is progressing nicely.

The coming week I will focus on the new module and the Illustrator tutorials I have left.