The Big Sleep!

February, I was given a brief that I really got my teeth into!
It was to develop and design the cover for the Penguin Published book, 'The Big Sleep' by Raymond Chandler,
First things first, I had to familiarise myself with the story, so borrowed the book and locked myself away with it, until I had read it, this wasn't a hard thing to do as it's actually a good and engaging read.
The Ideas were flowing as I was reading, until somebody told me, (as I was halfway through) that Humphrey Bogart had played the main character,  A Private Eye named Phillip Marlowe, In a movie adaptation, this stemmed the flow a little as Bogart was hijacking all my thoughts and appearing in every idea!

And so after reading the book, and making notes of key points, characters and other things I found to be important, reoccurring themes etc.

after building a 'sense of place' file for everything related to the story, from fashion and buildings to cars and decor of 30's America, I was itching to get started!

This is how I got going...

 

Some quick sketches working with objects that play parts in the story, 

I was trying to be experimental as usual, so as well as pencil, I was playing with water colours and crayon as well. Not the kind of media I'm used to using.

I was playing with lots of ideas the book gave me, stained glass was another...

I was enjoying the Ideas and thought process's that was producing these piece's of work but did not feel they would translate well enough into a book cover so I kept going.....

I really liked this drawing, it was more representative of my own personal style but still didn't think it would work well, as I would struggle to work a typeface into or around it, so kept going, and came up with this one as a rough idea....

So, using layout templates, I developed this idea, added some hand rendered type face,...

Eventually, settling on the type in the bottom left corner, I took my ideas to the computer, and after smashing my Ideas together, with some help from a friend, I settled on a layout for my final piece,...

Apologies for the wonky photography, this is the first draft of my final piece, it needs some polishing and refinement but the process of toying with numerous ideas rather than attempting to just develop my first idea, left me with a sense of pride rather than a thought of maybe I could have done more, so this brief gave me much more than just a challenge I welcomed but a new understanding of work process's that will serve me well in coming briefs!.

And...Just received an E-mail from Benjamin Wachenje, Giving permission to publish the interview I conducted with him, that will be up shortly!