Book Cover Redesign
Slaughterhouse-Five
This project was a cover redesign for the novel, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. The novel is part sci-fi, part war epic with loads of Vonnegut’s beloved humor.
There have been many editions of Slaughterhouse-Five published over the years as well as graphic novel renditions. Our goal was therefore to create something new and fresh, but that still spoke to the style of the author.
Process
The mood board was critical for this project because there have been so many editions of Vonnegut’s famous books. I wanted a unique take on the story.
There were two directions to take the design - either focusing on the WWII storyline or the science fiction storyline. Many of Vonnegut’s book covers are printed in simple shades of red, yellow, blue, and black without much depth or shadow. He was an avid doodler so I went through many of his sketches as potential cover features as well.
I looked at book covers in all genres that were published in the 1960s, when Vonnegut was most prolific. There were certain styles and typefaces common to that era, for example, the title and author on the top third of the page and a large, blocked off abstract illustration on the bottom.
The color palette needed to be bold, but not too playful, given the book’s subject matter.
Book covers from the 1960s tended to be in a sans serif typeface, though there were a few embellished exceptions. I preferred the lettering similar to the existing editions of the novel, just slightly updated.
My final three designs before the addition of color.
Some of the rejected covers - color versions.
