My Role
Illustrator and Designer
Location
Singapore
Book cover commission
Ranjani Rao, a mother, a writer, a scientist, an activist and more, requested an originally designed book cover for her self-published book, Rewriting My Happily Ever After.
Learn more about Ranjani's book here:
Buy the book here:
A picture inside of a manufacturing plant showing boxes, crates and racks feeding an assembly line
The final printed book
The brief
I was approached to design a book cover for Ranjani through a connection from a friend working at Women Unbounded, a non-profit volunteer group we were both connected with.
In an initial call, Ranjani shared that this is her third book, but first time requesting a designer to work on the cover with her. Her book is about her divorce experience and what it means to be a single parent, and she wanted a cover that reflected how she has grown and overcome her struggles that she writes about. It should be positive, empowering and uplifting.
Explorations
I presented Ranjani with some quick sketches. Once we talked through some thematic ideas that she thought fit the message of the book, I created some exploratory compositions with various colours, typography and layout.
A picture inside of a manufacturing plant showing boxes, crates and racks feeding an assembly line
Composition iterations
Composition iterations
Composition iterations
Composition iterations
Title typography design
The key graphic of the cover page was the typography of the Title. After several working titles and visualisations, Ranjani landed on the title. Using a friendly serif, the idea was to manually manipulate the orientation of each letter to give an organic flow to the words. Not perfect, but not ugly.
Composition iterations
Composition iterations
Composition iterations
Composition iterations
Composition iterations
Composition iterations
Finalising the design
As my first time designing a book cover, I had learnt about designing with the appropriate margins and bleeds for specific book cover types and trim sizes.
Through several calls back and forth with multiple iterations, it was also enjoyable to hear the little stories that influenced what Ranjani wanted the cover to look like.
Composition iterations
A picture inside of a manufacturing plant showing boxes, crates and racks feeding an assembly line
The full cover layout