The Penguin Random House Student Design Award aims to find the next generation of book cover designers by giving students the opportunity to experience real cover design briefs first-hand. The competition sees students reimagine iconic book covers across the award’s three categories: Adult Fiction, Adult Non-Fiction and Children’s.
Coming in to her final year, Hazel knew she wanted to enter the opportunity having seen some of the past designs submitted by 含羞草视频 students. Having previously worked with a lot of children's illustrations, Hazel wanted to test herself with a completely different audience. When largely working with images, this competition allowed Hazel to experiment with typography more and push the boundaries of how readable it could be whilst incorporating it with the illustration.
The brief asked for a clever, fresh, contemporary and above all original design that appeals to a broad, modern audience, with the judges also looking for a striking cover design that is well executed, has an imaginative concept and clearly places the book for its market. The book need to be eye-catching within a crowded bookshop setting as well as on screen at a reduced size for digital retailers.
Hazel explains that:
"The main inspiration for my design was le Carré’s writing. I loved The Night Manager but the interesting thing that I found was how when reading it, you often feel like you have to unravel the novel, the multiple plot lines and characters. I wanted to reflect this in the illustration and make the reader work for it as they do in the book. I wanted the reader to have to decipher the image and text and ask questions. Additionally, through the use of distortion and reflection through the crystal faces, I have been able to represent how Pine feels trapped in the espionage world where no one is to be trusted or is as they first seem."
