Last summer, I found myself in a reading rut. The once eternally exciting books from my cherished collection had become dull. I decided to shake things up, and as I was starting my master’s in publishing, I wanted to broaden my reading habits to better understand the world of books.
I moved past choosing familiar books and allowed everyone around me to recommend the books they most enjoyed.
As a result, I have read many books that will stay with me forever. However, even the books I did not love offered me something interesting. I could always understand why these books had been recommended to me.
I wanted to challenge myself to take 10 minutes per book to explore the themes of each as book covers.
I do not believe these covers are better, but it was an opportunity to stretch my design thinking. I made this a little challenging and decided to use one film photograph as each cover, with only typography to finalise the designs.
Now that the one-year mark is almost here, I wanted to share some of my favourite books I have been given alongside my designs. These can be seen in the images throughout this post. As I set a time limit, the designs are all unfinished, but I will revisit my favourites to get them portfolio-ready another time.
My most cherished book series will always be Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials. But I am grateful to have dived into beautiful new worlds, full of snow or sunlight, love or grief, sometimes all at once. It has been quite the journey for the old imagination, and one I do not plan on stopping anytime soon.