Book Covers
for Classic Novels

These books have been read and republished, and have had covers that have been redesigned countless times. It was a challenge to create covers that could capture the attention of a wider audience that spans across countries and a broad age group, and have the potential of gaining revenue for publishers. With all of this in mind, creating unity within the three book covers was another challenge to overcome. Each novel has a completely different plot, author, and they take place in three different periods. After hours of brainstorming, sketching, and feedback, I settled on the illustrated borders, and finally felt that I had found a design that unified the three books and hopefully gave justice to these fantastic written works.

Each cover features illustrations that depict the unique contents of the story. To create unity in the three designs, each of the covers has a border composed of symbols and objects from the story, the titles (on the front cover and spine) are all treated with gold-leaf foiling, and a symbol relevant to the contents of the story is placed below the title. The colours of the backgrounds (front and back covers) and the spine all work together as a gradient colour palette, and the hand-lettered titles are all created in the same style. The mockups help to make it easier to imagine how the hand-drawn illustrations and light-catching gold foiling would catch the attention of passers-by (if the books were ever sold in-store with these covers) and would encourage the customers to be drawn in to discover the meanings behind each of the illustrations on the covers.

I thoroughly enjoyed the process that went into creating each of these book covers. I have a love of classic literature and so despite the challenges that came with taking on this project, I appreciated having the opportunity to create covers that have the potential to lead others to be immersed in the same adventures that I have experienced throughout the pages of the novels.