Narnia Book Redesign
Design Process

The Front Cover

I started by sketching my ideas for the front cover. At first, I wanted to combine the images of the titular characters, by having both the Lion and the Witch inside of the wardrobe, as well as the idea of having just the Lion inside the wardrobe. After doing a bit of research about pre-existing covers for the book, I learned that the Lion is the main centerpiece of most covers for this book, so I decided to stray away from including the Lion as the main image.

Thinking of important scenes from the book, I remembered the scene where each of the Pevensie children (aside from Edmund) receive gifts from Father Christmas to help aid them in the coming battle, and I thought of creating an image of each of the gifts as the cover. The last idea I had was to have each of the children’s crowns from the end of the book. 

I brought each idea into Adobe Illustrator, and looked at how each of them looked as the main image on the front cover. I started them all out in black and white to make sure the image worked well as a cover image, before adding the color to them. I tested out various layouts for the text on each of the cover ideas, as well as shifting the around within the image in the Wardrobe images. 

After finding the best of the three wardrobe images, I converted all three cover ideas into color. I wanted to keep the colors realistic, yet cohesive within the image. I also wanted each individual image to work well with one another, in case I decided to use more than one of them on the cover of the book. I wanted the colors to sync so they looked as though they each belonged to the same book, rather than look like a bunch of images slapped together.

I liked the idea of having an image on the front cover that isn’t immediately obvious, but still relates to an important part of the story. Foregoing the wardrobe ideas for the front cover, I focused on using the crown idea as the cover image. Even though I wouldn’t use it for the cover image, I still wanted to make use of the gifts idea, possibly as an image to go on the back cover of the book, or somewhere on the inside of the book. Since I also wanted to have a small image to go at the beginning of each chapter, I also worked on a few ideas to be included there.

Since I decided to use the gifts image for the backside of the book cover, I wanted to make use of the wardrobe image as well. I decided to use the wardrobe image on the Table of Contents page to help fill the page out, rather than just having a list of the chapters. I also decided to include an inside cover page for the book, featuring the black and white version of the book cover, as well as using the lion from the shield as the image that appears on the book spine.