Assignment 4 -- Heidi Ertel -- The Road

Original Book Cover

Redesigned Book Cover

For this assignment I chose to redesign the cover of The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  The setting of the book is a post-apocalyptic world.  There are very few people left in the world, and everything is cold and covered in grey and ash.  The main characters of the book walk along The Road trying to get somewhere where they think things are better, and the book chronicles the experiences they have as they journey.

For the cover I redesigned, I used a picture I took of the Berlin Wall that just happened to have no people or traffic or anything within sight.  I changed the contrast and saturation to make the colors stand out before changing the photo into black and white to mimic the grey, lifelessness that pervades throughout the book.  I then adjusted the photo downward so it used the rule of thirds better and then filled in the empty space with a grey that looks almost white to create a dead empty space.  The font I used was a sans serif destroyed font (stamPete) which mimicked the modern world that had crumbled and decayed.  I chose to make the font a deep red so that there was a slight contrast between the the words and the photo, and also because red represents energy, war, danger, strength, power, and determination, as well as passion, all of which are represented in the book.  I placed the title in the top right-hand corner because I wanted it to be one of the first things seen by reading left to right.  It is also particularly accentuated because it is almost literally the only thing in the sky.  I then chose to place the author's name in the middle-left, just above the road and the wall because I didn't want to detract from the photo, and the eye would immediately jump from the red of the title to the red of the author's name.  And from there, the eye takes in the rest of the cover, particularly the perspective of the road from the angle I took the photo at, which helps symbolize the journey the characters embark on. 

Comments: Colton Fullmer, Doug Heath, Skyler Street, Blakely Gull, and Carrie Duford.