OUGD403: Study Task 3 - Drawing the Detectives

Task:

"Using your developing understanding of colour theory and typographic design/usage produce a graphic reinterpretation of your given Agatha Christie novel as part of the Guardian's celebration of what would have been the author's 125th birthday."

The book title I was given was 'Murder In Mesopotamia' a crime/mystery novel about a nurse who has to solve on going murders.

After having read briefly through an overview of the book I took note of several killing methods using within the novel. One of those being hydrochloric acid being poured into someones drinking water and another was a heavy stone quern being dropped from a roof top onto someone, bludgeoning them. I wanted these two key points of the novel to be portrayed within the book cover.

Initial Brief Sketches

Initial Idea

I wanted the word murder to stand out and to do this I thought of using just outlines for the letterforms, in the same way that a body outline at a crime scene would be done. But at the same time wanted the 'U' & the 'R' to take form of a glass beaker and a glass of water to represent the hydrochloric acid being poured into water.

One comment that was made about my poster at this point, by a friend, was that the Agatha Christie text seemed to big and overdone so I shrunk this down to a legible size to allow for the title of the book to be the prominent type within the book cover.

More Developed Idea

I needed a way to tie together the word Mesopotamia because it felt too overshadowed when used as a full word. So instead I split it up but used the idea of the rope wrapped around the heavy stone quern to tied the two parts together, whilst retaining one of the killing methods within the book cover.

Final Book Cover