Penguin Design Award

The books chosen for the Penguin Design Award this year is ‘James and the Giant Peach’ By Roald Dahl and ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ By Gabriel García Márquez.

‘James and the Giant Peach’ By Roald Dahl

I found this book cover more difficult than the book ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude.’ I think this was the case because I knew the Roald Dahl books better, and I was stuck because I love Quentin Blake’s illustrations, and used to study them intently when I was younger. I kept the illustrative style, so I used a vector design. I wanted to play with the sense of scale of the peach. The peach grew to mammoth proportions; however, I wanted to keep clear of the obvious, which is why I used the part of the book where the peach is just about to roll off the cliff at Dover. There is a sense of the peach being held at this point for a millisecond before plummeting to the sea below.

‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ By Gabriel García Márquez.

This was a difficult to read and to keep track of the story line, however, because there are so many aspects to it, I found it exciting that this cover could literally lead to anything! I have chosen to merge a pig’s tail and an iguana together, because the iguana plays a part in the story as Gabriel García Márquez refer to objects and people metaphorically. As for the pig’s tail, there is an apprehension that due to inbreeding, the women will bare children with a pig’s tail. I found this image of an iguana, which I think, is striking. As the book is turned it is uncovered that the curl of the iguanas tail is merged into a pig’s one. The actual merging is off the page and thus being more ambiguous.

This project was challenging as we were only given a short time. But I enjoyed having a short time on a project because I found that I would be more focussed and more targeted into my design work. It was an intense time but it was so good at the same time!

Competitions Evaluation Sheet