The reasons for me selecting this brief came down to it being a well recognised competition by penguin book covers, I had designed book covers in the past but the outcome of this would have been a refelction of my development as a designer approaching the end of my degree.
My contextual research for this brief began by looking into previous Clockwork orange book covers and film posters to identify the imagery surrounding this story.
The brief set as a competition by Penguin books demands:
"it is essential to come at it from a fresh angle. Try to design a new cover for a new generation of readers, avoiding the obvious clichés. Originality is key." and also "be competently executed with strong use of typography".
Research
Having already seen the film and enjoying the story I recognised a lot of imagery associated with this story. Pieces of the plot and imagery from existing covers of the film can be used to generate ideas.
One of the ideas from the film that always intrigued me was the idea of milk laced with drugs, "The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom. Moloko Vellocet is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence."
Interesting how Alex the protagonist drank this milk created by Anthony Burgess at 15 years of age to get him in the right place for ultra violence.
The connotations between a young boy drinking this milk has a strong connection between Alex's childhood and how his life is panning out.
Idea generation
Idea generation / concept generation began by sketching out famous icons from the story such as top hats, cogs, knifes, brains etc to form an idea of the imagery that was available to work with.
The traditional title for A clockwork orange was too iconic and well designed not to be used or paid homage to in some way.
The use of hand rendered typography was going to take place in form of the quote provided by penguin books "what we were after was lashings of ultraviolence"
Development
After illustrating various shapes and icons from the story I found that the glass of milk appeared very effective in conveying the mood of the story, representing Alex ,the protagonist's, troubled life and milk appeared to be a indirect symbol for childhood, the disrupted milk conveyed that Alex had a traumatic upbringing.
The colours grey, white and some orange from the penguin logos represented the bleak atmosphere in the world that Alex lived in and where A Clockwork orange is set, also conveying the mood of the story.
Decisions were made surround the use of the colour orange, such as the drinking glass being orange, but this drew away from the liquid being milk which was a vital component of the book cover.
Outcome
The use of the milk glass is rather innovative and conceptual in comparison to some of the other book covers found amongst the internet, a problem that may arise with this imagery is that only someone who is familiar with the story would see the relevance of the milk glass.
The final outcome of the book cover is one that I am pleased with, the only problem I foresee is that the requirements for the brief was an eye-catching design that would stand out on book shelves, this would have been best executed using the colour orange but at the same time would not have conveyed the message I had chosen to follow in my design,
The title of the book could have been neatened up further and generally sharpened showing connection to the original title design from the film poster.
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