Stanczak-Book

__Book Cover Design Research__ By: Tyler Stanczak

Research book covers online and post three really good ones here on your own new page.
 * 1) Explain why you feel the covers are good in terms of the elements and principles of art,
 * 2) Explain why you feel the covers are good in terms of the typography and the illustration.
 * 3) Tell how the book grabs the attention of the customer.
 * 4) Use your art vocabulary when you discuss your book covers.
 * 5) **Site the sources (websites) that you use for your research**

Basically what went down in this book is that a man named John Wade went off to war in Vietnam and during his experience out at war, he was emotionally and physically drained. As a result, he changed as a human being and never acted the same once he returned back home. In addition his lovely wife, Kathy Wade, would always find his behaviors and the things he did very strange because often times she would catch John Wade sleep walking or doing strange thing in general. As their marriage began to continue on after John Wade experienced war, John would have been accused for murdering his own wife, because his neighbors and relatives knew John was crazy and simply assumed that John was the reason for as to why Kathy Wade is missing. A recap as to how Kathy went missing is that, she apparently went out for a late night boat ride and never came back to the cabin since. This is John's side of the story by the way. A cop and a bunch of relatives meet up with John and ask him as to why Kathy is missing and if he knew anything about her reasons as to why she would run away. John would constantly ignore any straight forward questions and would constantly portray a suspicious image towards his peers. The book ends up where Kathy is never found and no one really knows whether or not John did kill her or not. Several readers are left analyzing the story in their own perspective and the author purposely ties in the idea of creating your own version as to how the book may end. Overall, the end all meaning of this book in my opinion is designed to portray how traumatic war can be for most people, and coping with it and remaining a sense of sanity when returning back to a normal functioning society is very hard to do at times. Enjoy!
 * Book Summary (In the Lake of the Woods):**



I felt as though this cover met the expectations of providing a good sense of design because they went past the concept of "the rule of thirds" instead they went in "the rule of fourths" it seems like. The typography in this book cover really gives it an edgy kind of Egyptian feel because of the sharp points that appear to be prevalent throughout the text. This book really grabs the attention of the customer because it is unique and not like most covers. It has a sense of motion as well as a unique concept mentioned earlier about "the rule of fourths."

Source: http://www.beautifulbookcovers.com/



For this cover in particular I felt as though it did a great job using shape as well as a blend of typography in order to evolve something unique and different. The typography in this book was mainly sans serif and that is somewhat confusing because I would assume that "The Gettysburg Address" would be a formal kind of novel, but they may have chose that particular type due to the fact that they need to fit in with in the president's face. I thought this book really grabbed my attention in particular because this novel could have been something really boring, but they decided to make it unique and incorporate a little bit of history as well as several uses of shape in order to get the message across for this book cover.

Source: http://www.beautifulbookcovers.com/

For this cover I thought they did a great job at being cheesy and thinking outside of the box because the title says the phrase, "Just My Type" and the designer thought it would be a clever idea to literary use different types of fonts in order to emphasis the idea of the actual title in itself. The typography in this cover was creatively incorporated because event though they passed the standard three limit recommendation, they were still able to pull of the excessive amounts of type because the whole cheesy concept emphasized the title mentioned earlier. I lastly, thought this book really grabbed my attention personally because it was one, very crazy looking at first, but then after reading the title I was able to understand as to why the designer chose to use more than three types of typography. Overall, I thought this designer was extremely clever and should be granted an A+ for creativity!

Source: http://www.beautifulbookcovers.com/