Book Cover Redesign
Losing Battles
This was a cover redesign for Losing Battles by Eudora Welty. It’s set on a struggling farm in hill country Mississippi in the 1930s. A large family reunion is taking place and they all sit around swapping stories.
The existing covers of this book focus primarily on the type. There isn’t much imagery. So for my redesign, I decided to incorporate some sort of picture or illustration to hint at the book’s subject matter.
Process
I looked up photos of Mississippi in the 30s to give me some context for the setting. Some art deco styles were still popular then, however the depression had to be factored in too which brought to mind distressed, darker colors. Welty was a photographer herself, so I was able to use the author’s own images as reference material.
The book mentions the red clay soil in their little town of Banner several times, so I thought red may factor into my design. The story takes place in August so there’s talk of the fruits, specifically watermelon, harvested for the reunion.
Typographic Options:
I narrowed down my typography options to one of three categories. I could do a distressed, rugged type. I could do an art deco type like that used in a lot of advertising at the time. I could also do a very bookish style type since there is a lot of talk about the school and education throughout the book.
I also came up with a hand lettered option for the title.
I did a watercolor painting for this cover which was really fun! The colors and textures were later edited in Photoshop.
Some of the rejected cover designs:
One of the options I considered was to make the cover look like a chalkboard. This alluded to the underlying themes about education in the book.
This was an alternate version of the watercolor cover, this time using my hand lettered title.
