Mermaid
《人鱼》· Book cover design
DURATION
3 Weeks
TEAM
Solo Project
ROLE
Illustration
Graphic design
Origional book cover
《人鱼》（Merimaid） is a suspense novel from China. It tells a serial murder case discovered by a girl and tells the story from the perspectives of the girl and the criminal police conducting reconnaissance. The girl's disappearance has a lot to do with the play Mermaid she is participating in, and the word mermaid is also a clue throughout the full text. Most of my inspiration for book cover design comes from the content and metaphor of this book
Illustrations
Cover concept 1
Chess
This design highlights the relationship between the characters in the book. As the narrator, the chess that represents heroine is in the middle. On her left side is the villain who oppresses her, and on her right side is the decent person who helps her. In order to emphasize the sense of opposition and the role camp, I used high saturation and contrast colors, and left blank in the center to highlight the heroine. I let part of the title hide behind the illustration to create a sense of gradation.
Drafts
Ideas
Develpoments
Cover concept 2
Under water
Sample of Chinese traditional painting style.
The purpose of this design is to try pure text design. In this cover, I blurred the title and made some adjustments to make it feel in the water (associated with the title of the book). The middle part of the text uses the author's quotation of the novel, and the back is the central idea of the whole novel. The information of the publishing house (the text in the lower left corner) refers to the style of the traditional Chinese painting seal, which makes the cover design more distinctive.
Drafts
Ideas
Develpoments
Cover concept 3
Growing
This design focuses on the role of heroine. In the book, she appeared as a supporting role in a red dress in the Mermaid, so I used the red fish to represent her. I wanted to show her perseverance against fate, so the little fish went upstream and broke through the limit. The illustrations on the back of the book show that she has become mature and independent.At the same time, I also added some small fish decorations on the spine of the book to make it not too abrupt.
Drafts
Ideas
Develpoments
Final print out
