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sarah + designs
THE ART AND DESIGN OF SARAH JENNINGS
TAKE ME WITH YOU BOOK COVER
ABOUT
Take Me With You is a young adult book written by Juniper Lee about a college student who accidentally opens an underworld portal and gets half-possessed by a comedic demon with hidden motives.
MY ROLES
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Book Cover Design
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Style Guide
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Book Display Concept
Programs used:
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Adobe Photoshop
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Procreate
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Adobe InDesign
MORE
Although the theme of the book centers around trickster demons it was Juniper's express wish that the cover not appear too demonic or dark in the overall design.
PROCESS
Sometimes knowing what a client doesn't want is just as important as what they do. Since devils and demons can be anything from a playful comedy to romance and oftentimes horror, I wanted to establish what to avoid.
(AVOID THESE STYLES)
The client didn't want the book to be viewed as horror or dark / satanic, mainly because that's wasn't the tone of the book, but also because she is marketing to young adults.
INSPIRATIONS
These are playful examples of dark-themed topics (grim reaper, vampire) that use stylized and graphic shapes to lighten the tone, which is the concept I used for the cover design.
COLOR MOODBOARD
CONCEPTS
The author did not want the book to appear too light or intense.
Juniper liked the idea of the silhouette, but wondered if we could obscure the figure like in the circle sketch
ICONOGRAPHY / IMAGERY
The greatest challenge was conveying the iconography of demons, devils, and fire while still maintaining approachability in the overall design. My solution was to have the figure partly obscured to hide some of the more demonic features (glowing eyes, devil horns). I stuck to cool colors to soften the tone and simplified the cover text to look like a handwritten note to add a personal element.
Soft cool tones calmed down the otherwise demonic composition, while the "demon portal" has a magic circle styled star graphic to diverge from the traditional pentagram symbol
STYLE GUIDE
COLOR SCHEMES
Juniper said, "I don't want this design to look like typical fire and brimstone with red devils and pitchforks". For this reason, I avoided warmer reds and oranges and gravitated towards cooler tones. I came up with a layered purple/blue gradient that represented an idea of a tunnel, and paired it with a bright green fire that produced a mysterious, magical tone.
BOOK DISPLAY
*This is a concept only, not a photo of the final product
I created a book kiosk concept that mimics the cover "tunnel" graphic, the green flames, and the same color gradient.
I also created the copy for the sign inspired by a play on words, "Meet David, just a normal college student battling with his inner demon"