Othello Book Cover

I recently read a very helpful article where a group of illustrators shared their tips for illustrating and designing book covers (you can read it here). It really inspired me to try designing a cover myself and made the whole thing seem a lot less daunting.

I spent a while trying to decide which book I would like to design a cover for and in the end I went for a play, I chose 'Othello' by William Shakespeare. This seemed like a good choice to me because I am currently studying it at college on my English Literature course so I know the story in quite a lot of depth, but I am also familiar with a lot of the imagery used in the play and I thought this would make it much easier for me to design a cover, especially for my first ever attempt.

Before I did anything, I went straight to Pinterest and started collecting images relating to 17th Century Venice. This included things like architecture and costume. I also looked at past performances of Othello and the posters that accompanied them to help me start visualising ideas. I began by sketching a bunch of thumbnails to map out the main elements of the cover and also to try out different compositions. I knew I wanted a cover that either suggested the conflict between Othello and Iago or used the symbol of the handkerchief.

Once I had done this I then asked for opinions from my sister and friend, who are also studying the play, about which designs they thought were strongest. There were a few designs that we liked, but in the end I wanted more of a subtle, symbolic cover with hidden meaning and I thought the following design was most successful at this. So, with a thumbnail chosen I then started to develop the idea, think more about the details and how I would complete the final illustration.

 Once I was happy with my plan I started drawing it in Photoshop. I began with the background for which I used a deep red colour layered over a textural image from Lost and Taken. I played around with the drawing a lot in the process and I was constantly adding and removing elements until I felt I had a good balance between detail and simplicity. This was the design I ended up with:

I was pretty happy with this design, but there was still something about it that I felt didn't really work-  besides the obvious spelling mistake in the top right corner! I couldn't work out which part of the cover I wasn't happy with so I left it and came back to it the next day. I decided that the eyes weren't quite right, I wanted them to be slightly smaller, closer together and lower. I also felt that the final tendril that crosses Othello's chest was too much and obscured the text so I removed this.

Here's the final illustration:

Overall, I am pleased with the cover and I think it gets across the atmosphere and the tension of the play well. I think the  colours and symbolism are effective too,  with the white tendrils representing Iago's lies and their disastrous effects, hence the coil around Othello's neck. Also, I think Othello's plain white eyes represent his blindness to Iago's duplicity quite well.

I really enjoyed the whole process of designing this cover and it is definitely something I will be doing again in the future. Next time I would like to try illustrating for a completely different genre so I can practice interpreting other texts and representing them through illustration. Another thing I would love to do is to complete a book cover illustration using mainly traditional media.

Thanks for reading!