Shutter Island Book Jacket
ARTD222 Project
Timeline
Nov. 2022 - Dec. 2022
Learning Outcomes
Moodboards, Thumbnails,
Photo Manipulation & Type Setting
Shutter Island is about U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigating Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped patient, a murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them.
Spoiler warning ahead!
Project Prompt
Choose a book from the list I Haven’t Read it But I’ve Seen the Movie via Goodreads., and design a book jacket for chosen book.
Preliminary Research
Before designing, it was essential for me to determine the mood of my book sleeve that reflects what I felt the book was about. While I have not read the book, I watched the film and researched the main similarities and differences between the book and film.
Shutter Island is a thriller-mystery novel, however, later turns into a tragedy surrounding the main character. In my book sleeve, I wanted to focus more on the underlying theme of grief while also pulling readers in with the mystery aspect.
Moodboard
Next, to explore my ideas, I sketched 10 thumbnails for possible covers and iterated upon them 4 times.
I found that my strongest covers were ones that did not show directly depict the island and instead hinted at elements through
the novel.
Book Cover Drafts
Choosing 5 of my strongest concepts, I moved forward to drafting these covers on multiple programs. While receiving feedback from my professor and peers, I determined that the third cover was my strongest, conceptually and visually.
Book Cover Drafts
Drafting Process
I transferred my book cover into a book sleeve draft. In this draft, I typeset the book synopsis, author biography, and reviews. With this skeleton, it was time to further refine my project to truly depict my selected themes.
Book Jacket Drafts
While refining my design, I wanted to explore my book sleeve with storytelling. During the climax of the book, we find out that Teddy is actually Andrew Laeddis, a patient at the hospital. A doctor at the hospital essentially created a fake identity for Andrew as a form of therapy to treat Andrew's trauma and grief around the deaths of his children and late wife.
With this concept, I wanted to play on the idea that the main character has been investigating fake characters throughout the book, and ultimately chasing a shadow of a man. Overall, this book is dark and depressing, which is something I wanted to share with readers right off the bat.
Final Design
This project helped me understand
the importance of process work
much more thoroughly. Often times throughout my design phase, I would feel stuck, but I was able to reference back to my research, moodboard, and sketches to find inspiration.
Without preliminary work, my design would not have evolved into the cover I ended up with.