Covered: Sheep Cover Ideas

Below shows my initial ideas for the poster I had four different ideas. The first one is a lot of sheep look at the reader in a state of confusion as they can't see their leader. Number 3 ?(not finished drawing) was a similar idea except all the sheep were looking different ways to show their confusion and how lost they are without a leader. Number 2 and 4 are similar with the idea of small sheep in rows forming a pattern.

I decided to explore number 2 further as it had the most potential. The page is divided into thirds with the middle third being the title. The title nicely divides up the other two halves. The sheep at the top and at the bottom will be facing different ways to imply the right and the wrong way or even just different path choices. Ideally I want to screenprint the cover and poster, as the brief is only 2 colours plus stock it would be a great opportunity to screen print. 

This design would only use the two colours of green (for the background) and black/grey for details on sheep and text. The rest would be a white stock. The design might raise some challenges whilst screen printing because it will have to be perfectly inline to get the the sheep looking good. I have a digital printing slot booked as well just incase I cannot get this screen printed in time or something goes wrong.

Vectorising Sheep

 Firstly I found the image of the sheep I was going to vectorise.

 I then created the shape by manipulating circles and rectangles.

When I finished it and added colour it came out like the sheep on the above right! Not great, the shape doesn't look like a sheep this is because they are smooth lines rather than sheepy/wooly lines. I haven't got a clue what happened with the legs but just realised it was better to start again.

Retrying with a different sheep and method didn't succeed either. I tried drawing more cloud comical lines rather than straight. However this has managed to form a square which again doesn't look great and won't work for the book cover.

In the end I found a vector on google. I wanted to imply the texture of a sheep.

I removed the lines and filled in the gaps in the pattern. I also sorted the legs out so they didn't look so crossed over.

By changing the main body to white but keeping the legs and head as black has broken the design up and made it look like a colourful vector especially with the use of the green background. The sheep currently looks like its head is peaking out of a very wooly jumper.

By removing the straight line around the neck and legs it has made the sheep look completed.

Creating the book cover

In my Nietzsche book there are some elements that I really like and want to continue onto my design. One of them is the use of a double stroke with one line being thicker than the other.

This was my first attempt at the book cover. I didn't really focus on the type as I wanted to get the sheep in the right place. I quite like the placing of Nietzsche's name amongst the sheep as it leaves the middle space clear for just the book title.

I changed the font to Fanwood which I feel suits the book well. The neat serif almost clashes with the simple sheep illustrations this could reflect the two groups that Nietzsche talks about; The Nobles and The Herd clashing. The type currently is overpowered by the sheep. The type needs to stand out whilst fitting in with the design.

I removed a row and a line of sheep to try and remove the busyness of the first design. However it hasn't helped the type to stand out or be any clearer.

I have experimented with the typography to see if I can find a good composition which both makes the most of the space and is clear and easy to read.

Here the beyond looks like it has strayed off. The ampersand is too big and distracts from the type.

Again the ampersand is too big. The Beyond has been balanced by the authors name in the opposing diagonal corner. Again this doesn't work, the amount of space between the words isn't equal and the title doesn't sit well.

It was hard to centralise the Beyond because the centre of the ampersand and the centre of the whole title aren't the same. This means that it looks odd either being central but not above the ampersand or being above the ampersand and not being central!!

Centralising all the type has worked well. It has been balanced the type and made it look more central and neater.

I am mixed between this type or the second type layout I tried. I will continue to work on it as I am still not happy with the type or the composition of the sheep.