OUGD503 - Studio Brief 01 - Stratford Literary Festival Book Jacket

This brief involves designing a book cover for the Stratford Literary Festival 2017 poem competition. The book will feature the winning poems and short stories by everyone who has entered their competition and is to be published by 23rd April 2017. The competition holders are looking a unique, stylish colourful and eye-catching design that represents it's title Sharing Stories. It doesn't have to relate to Stratford-Upon-Avon, however it can. The book will be on sale towards the end of April in Waterstones.

Stratford-upon-Avon is known to be the birth place of William Shakespeare and it would be positive to relate the cover to the location of the festival. Stratford is a popular tourist destination because of it's history, its market culture and the river Avon running through it. Stratford is well known for its boating culture.

The first range of ideas produced related to the boats and it's history by creating a range of covers using typography seen on canal boats and a layout similar to an old style newspaper. The canal type concepts involved using a range of slab serif or serif typefaces with shadow. Much of the type is either curved or lined straight along the boats.

The second concept involved creating a range of newspaper layouts and grids. It would use German block typefaces. This idea didn't feel as though it connected with stratford as much as the first and this concept didn't expand as much.