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Penguin book cover competition

10/25/2021

Project 2.0

Deadline: 10am, Friday 12th November

Brief

Reimagine a cover of a bestselling book, a competition by The Penguin Cover Design Award competition.

The choices:

Adult Fiction: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Adult Non-Fiction: Diary of a young naturalist by Dara McNulty
Children’s Fiction: A murder most unladylike

A Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens

The first book in a murder mystery series, about two girls; Hazel and Daisy. They set up their own detective society called Wells & Wong.

The original book cover

Notes from the book

Some notes I jotted down while reading the book to understand who the characters are.

Set in the 1930s (English all girls school)

I collected lots of imagery from 1930s boarding schools to get a feel for the setting.

Murder mystery inspo

A collection of images that link with the book and provided reference when drawing.

Thumbnails

Type Examples

Logo designs

Final Design choice

Initial Outcome

Final outcome after feedback

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

A portrayal of a group of interconnecting characters, mostly Black British women:

Amma: Theatre director, getting her big break at the National Theatre who is the connector among the 12 characters in various ways.
Yazz: Amma’s 19-year old daughter at University.
Dominique: good friend of Amma’s who follows lover Nzinga to live at Spirit Moon in the United States.
Carole: Business woman, gang-raped as a teen, who was a student in Shirley King’s high school class.
Bummi: Carole’s mother, immigrant from Nigeria and housecleaner for Penelope Halifax, and entrepreneur in the cleaning business
Latisha: good friend of Carole’s in high school, wild in high school, becomes a grocery store supervisor after working as a cashier post-high school, becomes the “new” LaTisha.
Shirley: Teacher at Peckham School for Boys and Girls, teaches both Carole and LaTisha, best friend to Amma from grammar school.
Winsome: Shirley’s mother. Has affair with Shirleys husband Lennox.
Penelope: Teacher at Peckham School, raised white by her adoptive parents, Hattie is her biological mother.
Megan/Morgan: identifies as gender-free, pronouns they/theirs, lectures in one of Yazz’s classes.
Hattie: 93-year old farmer and Morgan’s great grandmother, Penelope’s biological mother, Grace and Joseph’s daughter.
Grace: bi-racial daughter of Abyssinian Wolde and Daisy who died of TB, Hattie’s mother

'The Last Amazons of Dahomey'

The name of the play that the character Amma writes in the book, 'The Last Amazons of Dahomey' takes inspiration from real women in 1897 in the kingdom of Dahomey, in West Africa. These women were all trained to fight with swords and guns and were considered to be fearless warriors.