Bull Mountain Book Jacket

Bull Mountain is a novel written by Brian Panowich. This story takes place in the mountains of North Georgia. Where there are family empires, crime, drugs and being untouched by the law. This town will test loyalties, pinning brother against brother.

The Challenge

Bull Mountain was published in 2015. The cover is a photo of a misty mountain and trees. The photo gives off the ominous and mysterious feeling the town in the story has. For my book jacket redesign I wanted it to still have the mysterious feeling but also show how rugged the town is and the ups and downs the reader will go through.

Main Objectives

Symbolism

It’s important to me that that cover has symbolism as to what the story is actually about. They need to have correlation to each other.

Cover Design

Designing for a new jacket it needs to stand out on the shelf. With all the necessary information laid out appropriately to not overwhelm the reader.

Hierarchy

Using hierarchy on the book jacket is used to quickly display the most important information so that the cover will catch the reader’s eye.

Initial Direction

My initial direction for the Bull Mountain Book jacket re-design was to illustrate a mountain and fill in the negative space with adjectives and subjects that are found in the novel.

I used a color palette with shades of blue to give it the ominous and mysterious rugged feeling. For the mountain I illustrated a silhouette style. For the back cover information I wanted to keep it very simple and clean so it did not feel cluttered.

Moodboards

Digital Drafts

The first round of digital drafts I filled in the negative space of the mountains with text. Still keeping the overall jacket very simple so the mountain illustration would pop.

Final Solutions

For my final solutions I changed the illustration for the cover. I sketched the mountain scene with a mechanical pencil so I could get that gritty texture. I vectorized the illustration and used it as the new cover. I believe this better describes the book and gives the cover more character. I also changed the title typeface to something that works cohesively with the illustration.

Reflection

Having to re-design a pre-existing book cover was a tough process. I constantly struggled internally wondering if I was making the right design decisions. After not being able to create the vision I had in my head, and actually physically illustrating it, I achieved the look I wanted. I feel like I learned a lot from this project and would love to continue to work on it in the future.