Vonnegut Book Cover Explorations

Year — Fall 2021

Tools — Adobe Illustrator

Dimensions — 40 × 17"

Synposis — Designed three distinct book covers for Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, and developed the strongest into a complete dust jacket.

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is one of my favorite novels. Naturally, it was my first pick for this class project. While designing, I focused on visually conveying the delicately written balance between cruel horrors and fantastical metaphors.

Explorations

I chose to utilize green or red in all three of my exploratory book covers, respectively representing the Tramalmadorians and violence of war. The covers differs greatly, however, in terms of busyness, texture, and symmetry, ultimately creating a completely different mood in each variation.

Dust Jacket

We then developed the most promising of the three explorations into a dust jacket. The leftmost design was most visually intriguing—the combination of the roses, gas mask, and hands with eyes (Tralfamadorians) gave it a strange, almost eerie appeal—so that was the exploration I chose to develop further.

I designed two versions: one with a review on the back and the blurb on the inside front cover, and one reversed (as per request from my professor). The back cover of the first version has a stronger visual impact because of the dramatic negative space and minimal text.