Ink and Bone Anthology cover design

I have recently been working quite closely with one of my tutors, Matt Robertson, on a cover design for an MA Creative Writing anthology called Ink and Bone. The brief was incredibly precise to the point of being rather restrictive, with stuff like:

• We would prefer the whole title in lower case type and use the word "and" rather than an ampersand
• Must be accessible and professional - so nothing too complex or fussy
• It should resemble a proper published book, as opposed to a student give-away or a catalogue
• The typography needs to be strong and classic; a simple serif face, perhaps; no Gothic or old-fashioned/elaborate fonts
• It should be in colour and we like the idea of an image/design which bleeds to the edges of the cover page and, perhaps, spreads across to the back page
• The title could be knocked out of the image in white, or overprinted in a darker colour
• One suggestion is to create something in the style of Rothko
• Another suggestion is a simple recurring pattern or coloured background but more abstract, we think, than geometric
• We don't want anything literal based on the title - i.e. ink wells, ink splotches, bones, skeletons, etc
• We don't want any images that are specific regional references - i.e. to the South West, Bath or Corsham

Kind of sounds like they already know exactly what they want. What are the chances that I will guess exactly what they have got in their heads? Joking aside, it could be a lot worse. Some clients know exactly what they are after but give you no clues as to what that is, or they have no ideas at all, apart from that everything you send them is wrong. So I knocked up a few initial cover ideas based on the brief:



That image is actually a close up of bone, or more specifically osteoporosis, but I think I can get away with it because it is pretty abstract. I tried a whole host of different colours and type treatments but this was my initial favourite. I also quite liked this one, although the font is a cheeky sans serif:



I wondered if the text was strong enough without the photo:



Or how about a much smaller photo of a piece of bone?



I also quite like this one, whereby I used an Illustrator plugin to create a subtle Voronoi pattern, which suggests maybe a cellular structure. I think this would look great with the lines in a spot varnish, although I am sure that would be over-budget.



I sent these off and waited for feedback. When it came it was tepid, to say the least. So I tried attacking it from a different angle, this time going with Illustrator to create some novel designs, rather than relying on photography. Here are a few of my favourites:



I sent these off and heard nothing back for a few weeks. Then Matt got in touch to say that they liked the type, although of course they would like to see more variations, and they had also settled on a photo which he had managed to nab from a textiles student.



I sent a bunch of variations on the title text and was really pleased when I got them to change their minds about the ampersand. This chosen title is set in Baskerville Old Face Regular, while the ampersand is Baskerville Classico Italic:



I love that ampersand! Anyway, we had our image and the title but there was still quite a way to go. Matt and I spent a long time tweaking the text, manually adjusting the kerning and getting everything just right and eventually we came up with this final cover:



This was quite an interesting little distraction for a while, and it will be nice to see it in print (I assume I can blag a copy) but it doesn't really feel like my project. In fact, I was so heavily directed by Matt and the client that it feels more like a collaboration. That's fine really and is probably the way I will work as a junior designer.