Why not focus on different people?

Why not focus on different people?

King Arthur

2023-03-16

Illustrator, Photoshop

This is my project from my other Intro to Design class at Tennessee Technological Institute. We were tasked to take a book that was in the public domain and create our own design for a book cover.

So I started this project off by choosing a book that was in the public domain. I chose Kind Arthur and His Knights of The Round Table as I saw a lot of potential with this idea!

I started these sketches off with some base ideas from King Arthur, such as the Round Table, The Holy Grail, Sword in the stone and the Castle.

I played with ideas such as combining them into one cover split up or even combined. But nothing really seemed to stick. It all felt generic.

I even tried playing around with the idea of making it seem like a timeline type cover, but even that felt loose.

So I started brainstorming to come up with a new idea!

I decided to work on the idea of having the covers not focus on the main character’s stuff.

So we have Merlin the Wizard as my new cover mascot. I tested how I wanted to design him. Whether he would have an orb or a sword.

I started to heavily take my inspiration for my Merlin design from the Cover for Middle Earth Quest featuring this Wizard Pondering the Orb.

I felt it would be a great fit for a cover as it was a cover, but how do I make it about King Arthur and not Lord of The Rings?

I tested making the orb show the sword in the stone as a show off thing.

I also decided to show the Lady in the Lake giving the Sword to King Arthur as the back cover to show even more of the important side characters.

Here is our big digital sketch that really set in stone what was happening. Merlin’s design shifted to being more ominus and overshadowing to show his importance to the plot. He would hold his orb in his hands with the Title in the orb. On the back The lady in the lake would still hold her sword. Although now she is a cat girl because it is funny.

This is the final design of the Book Cover layed out flat. I went with a purple and gold color scheme to ressemble royal themes. Merlin lost his hands for his orb and his orb got the distorted text involved. The lady in the lake is just a outline holding the outline of the sword above her. The folds on the edge have the Holy Grail and the Sword for King Arthur.

You can also see the logo for Ryanism Creative Studios aka what Ryanism Industries was prior.

I’m not sure there is anything too major I would change about this design. I would definetly add more texture to everything to make it more visually intersting and make the void space look less forgotten empty.