OUGD406 - Studio Brief 02 - Study Task 02 - Book Cover Analysis

I have been given the task to carry out some research and analyse the cover of my given book 'How to be a Graphic Designer Without Loosing Your Soul'.

http://www.autostraddle.com/freelance-graphic-designer-the-kit-137089/

I first found out that the cover of this book was designed by 'Bibliothèque' a design company that create work fro many different types of media and purposes. Websites, print, posters, retail, packaging and much more.

'Bibliothèque produce compelling printed literature that communicates with clarity and authority, from a best selling book, through to marketing materials, property brochures and annual reports'

http://www.bibliothequedesign.com/projects/communications/

There is definitely some consistency between the design of this book and vast amount of other designs that this company have crated. quite a modernistic style with everything and when looking at the definition of how the company came to this design for the cover of this book, this is the information they gave 'Text-heavy books often appear dry and academic. To counter this, a strong typographic palette was devised. Having introduced the contents on the front cover, a flexible grid was adopted for the spreads, enabling a controlled level of expression' 

http://www.bibliothequedesign.com/projects/communications/how-to-be-a-graphic-designer/

Within the book, it is clear that every page for each section of the book is connected to the design of the books cover, the way the information is separated, and the use of blue and white to make priority to some information, or pages than others. 

When looking through certain sections of the book that appealed to me and taking in the preface and introduction to the book, it told me that this book picks up on the problems that new emerging graphic designers are going to face in their career. The initial message that this book is promoting is 'How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul addresses the concerns of young designers who want to earn a living by doing expressive and meaningful work, and who want to avoid becoming hired drones working on soulless projects'. 

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BaoMZtdVPGEC&dq=how+to+be+a+graphic+designer&source

The way the author has written this book is based on his own experience. The author seemed to have interpreted his own still ongoing experiences within his career, from personal designs and work he has produced for clients. The author talks about how to keep your 'soul' from being taken away from your work to please the 'majority'. This is how the author interprets the message of the book. 

When relating the message of this book to the cover and overall design of the book, personally it seems to almost 'defeat' the point of the message, as beautiful as it is. Meaning that I think that the cover of this book is quite 'soulless', there is not much to look at, and the design of the cover does seem to follow the modernistic, simplistic design that you would find on a lot of design work that aesthetically pleases most eyes. There is definitely not a lot of personal expression in this cover design. 

However, maybe this does work on a certain level, the fact that this book cover does look a little soulless, somehow does connect to the title of the book and to some degree does interpret the overall message of the book. Making the ready think more about the title of the book rather than how it looks.