Friday, 8 February 2013

Penguin Design Award - Getting Crafty

I gathered some rather lovely imagery for the cover of The Big Sleep, keeping with my theme of surreal noir imagery and the setting of the Hollywood Hills. Initially I was going to create some collages in Photoshop, but then I thought that it might be nice to set it all up in a 3D environment, perhaps in After Effects, where I would have total control over camera positions and lighting. However, I worry that I am too quick to jump to a technological solution where there is perhaps too much control and not enough space for "happy accidents", so I decided instead to make a little set, using cutouts, wire and blu-tack, all arranged on some handy blocks of polystyrene that I found in the studio.



I decided to use the font ITC Machine for the cover, as it is very similar to the lettering on the Hollywood/Hollywoodland sign. I thought it would look cool to have the lettering actually as a part of the model, fixed to the different layers of terrain, rather than slapped over the top afterwards.

For a bit of secondary research, I looked at the beautiful work of Big Active in their book "Head, Heart & Hips", as well as the surreal collage work found in "Vizz: Outrageous Visual Communication":



I set to work stick all my imagery onto mount board and cutting out each individual prop with a scalpel. It took forever!

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