Made and Found Objects
Turtles All the Way Down Book Cover Redesign
Research
The book I chose to redesign the cover for was Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. I read this book over quarantine when it first started in 2020 and I read the whole thing in one sitting. I was so engrossed in the way it was written and it heavily related to what I was going through at the time. It overall just had a lot of good messages for a coming of age book. Anxiety and OCD were some main components of the novel and I wanted to find a way to focus on that in may redesign.
This is the original and only cover of the book. I love the simplicity of the design and the spiral on it because it is symbolic for the anxiety and OCD the main character in the book deals with.
Hands On
At first, I tried to stencil out the whole title, but it was way too small and difficult to cut the intricate details of the letters. Since I was using negative space, it also made it too hard to put the tape inside the letters that I would then also had to cut out, so I decided to restart and do bigger letters by themselves.
The technique I stuck to using was super tedious, but it was the only way I could think of doing it. I ended up cutting out each letter I need and then I put scotch tape over them and cute around the letter again, leaving a little border of tape around the letters so they could stick to the water color paper. Then to attempt to get an ink blot effect, I dropped ink onto the tape on the letters and blew the ink with a straw to spread it on the borders of the letters. Working with negative space was quite difficult and I was a little disappointed with how the ink ended up looking, but I tried my best with what I had.
I just repeated the cutting, taping, cutting, and blowing process for my alphabet and it didn't quit give me the effect I was hoping for.
The Final Result
Overall, I wanted to do more with my project, however the use of negative space and my lack of knowledge in Photoshop made it difficult for me to incorporate more into the background of cover. I like the big ink blot on the back and think it helps connect the overall concept I was going for.
