Book Jacket Brief

For the Brief (redesign a book jacket) I chose 'Black Sun: depression and melancholia' by Julia Kristeva. At first I was drawn to the book by it's title. Looking at it and reading a bit of it I realised it was very heavy- obviously dealing with quite dark subjects, but also quite intellectual. I was quite tempted by something like a book on British airways liveries but I thought it would be a challenge to create a cover that was explanatory but not too alienating for such a dark book. Also I thought the current cover wasn't that good-probably not the best reason to choose it but ah well (Also, I have grown to love the photo on the front).


There are a few quotes at the beginning of the book that I thought were interesting (so I made a note of them)

'Why so downcast, my soul, why do you sigh within me'
Psalms 42:5 & 11

'Man's greatness resides in knowing himself to be wretched'

The first imagery I thought of were the typical imagery related with melancholy- characters walking in the rain, a black dog, a withering plant, renaissance paintings of sad people. I also thought of a literal interpretation of the title- a black sun- which made me think of Bruno Munari's book 'drawing the sun' - which I'll try and find a copy of. 'Black Sun' also made me think of the album covers 'The skys gone out' by Bauhaus and 'Blackstar' by David Bowie- which sent me off again onto solar eclipses. 

The book also goes into quite a lot of detail about a painting- The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb by Hans Holbien the Younger (1522)- which might put forward some interesting imagery. (especially after my current love for Picasso's vollard suite-which deals with that kind of imagery in a modern approach.)

I decided that the cover should be more stark- and initially I think I will work only in monochrome- but will stay open to introducing colour. 

Next step is starting to think of imagery, developing it and pushing it.