I wanted to work with either an eye, acting as a symbol for observing, truthfinding etc. or a hand with the illuminati/magic eye in it, which is an african symbol to repel demons and black magic (http://www.answers.com/topic/black-magic -last paragraph) Both have appropriate meanings to the content, and can be made visually appropriate to the book through photography turned into duotone images similar to those inside the book. I took a photo of my eye and my hand using an art filter on my camera called pinhole, which simulates a pinhole camera, where there's a circular rim round the image of increasing shadow, this created a grungy and old feel to the photographs which felt appropriate to the way the images feel inside the book. Here is documentation of me trying to get my eye to the colour I wanted using the monotone tool:
I tried to get to a point where there was a good amount of blue from the book showing through the black so the colour scheme on the outside and the inside tied together nicely. There was a little bit of tweaking, but I believe I got their in the end.
And here are a few trials, trying to apply typographical elements to the cover
The issue here is that the black is true black and not a mixture of black and the spot colour I've chosen for my books, so it seems light grey as a pose to the rich black it should be. I started with huge type for the title, mimicking the way the header type is presented in the book. I thought I best try it smaller though and unfortunately it just doesn't work. Compared to the contents of the book it would feel tame and wouldn't exploit the typeface that Dave has designed for me thoroughly enough.
Once I'd gotten typography to the stage I was happy with, large, running across three lines, I tried to recreate this using hidden truth. I like the way that the word truth runs awkwardly between the two lines, it creates a nice aesthetic because it sticks to the same rules as the conspiracy section of the book.
I spent a while designing the spot varnish overlay for the eye as well, I wanted the spot varnish to subvert the message of they eye, which on it's own represents seeing, vision and truth. Adding a triangular spot varnish turns it into the all seeing eye symbol of the Illuminati. I experimented with a fully filled in triangle with space for the eye and a bit of 'light' gleaming out of the top, but I quickly realised how tacky this looked and went for the simple triangle by it's self. I think this gave it enough for observant people to realise what it means, without over complicating the image.
At the end of this section of development I added in some quotations looking through at this website: Quotes
Ones that I feel are appropriate are :
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. --George Orwell
There are two ways to be fooled: One is to believe what isn't so; the other is to refuse to believe what is so. --Soren Kierkegaar
"It's not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true." --Henry Kissinger
When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.-- Dresden James
I think of all of these my preference lies in the Henry Kissinger and Soren Kierkegaard quotes because they both speak of a duality between truth and deceit that feels very appropriate to the book. So I tried both of them out. I stuck with the Soren Kierkegaard quote because it puts some context to my book; the spot varnish things, labeled hidden truth are called into question as the truth, as is the rest of the book.
I then started tidying the cover design with the eye behind it up, ensuring that all the blacks were the same. I started out with a spine that had the book name and author name on it, but I realised with the stitching technique I was going to have to use (2 up saddle stitch) having a spine would involve a much more complicated gluing proccess involving gauze etc. it's much easier just to remove the spine and put the details elsewhere. I also reduced the size of the type for 'conspiracy' and 'hidden truth' so they sat more within the page rather than consuming the whole page. They became quite a neat rectangular shape and the geometric triangle sat upon this in a much more complimentary way.
I also sat the name of the book and my name down on the page in much the same way the title and page numbers move throughout the book. I though this created a nice symmetry between the cover and content.
Open publication - Free publishing
Below is the cover without the spot varnish overlays:
Below is the cover without the spot varnish overlays:
Open publication - Free publishing
Here's me working on the
hand, I didn't try out too many things with this because it started looking how I wanted it to pretty quickly.
Here is the cover layout I'd become very happy with when the eye was in the background, but with the hand image applied to the front. It just doesn't make as much sense as the eye. Even with the triangle inside it, it just seems to obscure and not as tight conceptually.
And finally, here is an abstract version with a picture of space I'd been using for one of the 'splash' spreads, again it's just a bit obscure and doesn't have as much symbolic meaning to do with truth and lies as the eye does. The eye with the triangle also links really well with the Illuminati symbolism.
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