Original Redesign
For this week’s Digital Imagery in Web Design, we were tasked with redesigning a book cover. I landed on The Great Gatsby. In case you haven’t read the book or watched the movie, here is a description of the tale found on Amazon:
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.
This book is most notably a continuous party. It is living life to its fullest, in print form. It is the Jazz Age, and it represents the decadence of the age.
The original book cover is a set of eyes, which ties to the fact that Gatsby is an enigmatic character. At the beginning of the story, no one has met him, or spoken with him. But that changes over time.
My redesigned book cover hopes to portray that decadence that the book captures, specifically the parties that Gatsby orchestrates at his home. The man holding the wine glass is Mr. Gatsby, and the party goers are within the wine glass to show his power to quite easily throw a memorable party. Of course, the gold confetti also supports the extravagance of the era. The tagline, “You only live once,” is part of a quote from the novel.
To create the redesigned book cover, I started with the wine glass image. First I used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out the arm and wine glass from the background. Next, I cut the wine portion of the wine glass out – again using the magnetic lasso tool – and pasted it back in a new layer. I then used a clipping mask to replace the party-goer image with the wine in the wine glass. The original image also featured a woman’s arm with a red sweater, so I cut out the sweater and pasted in a suit sleeve to make it appear that the arm belonged to Mr. Gatsby. I finished this part of the image by adding a gold “outer glow” and drop shadow to the arm and wine glass to make the image stand out, but also to support the idea that everything was gold and decadent in that era and at Mr. Gatsby’s home.
For the title and author lines of the front cover and spine, I used Riesling Regular font because it fit in with the era the book was set in. For the tagline and the summary on the back cover, I used Caviar Dreams Regular, again because it supported the era of the book’s setting, and because it paired well with the Riesling font. With the exception of the summary on the back cover, I used similar text effects for all the text and that was inner glow, outer glow, and bevel and emboss. For the spine which was set on a lot of confetti and the tagline, I also used satin and cover overlay to help the font stand out.
For the background, I found the gold confetti image but edited it by using the spot healing brush to remove some of the gold confetti pieces from the area around the title, author and tagline of the book. I felt that it was too distracting to be effective.
I also used a slight drop shadow on the background block for the back cover summary to make it float slightly above the background image. I also added a drop shadow to make the spine appear that it was above the front and back cover, as it would appear in real life.
I am very pleased with the execution and, more important, the feel of this book cover. I think it represents the lavish atmosphere of the era.
I am not associated with the book, publisher or author and this book cover redesign is solely for educational purposes.
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