Book cover mood board...

Type Studies

Concept Board

Journal 1: Writing for Visual Thinkers

I thought this was a good article to read because it pointed out ways for a designers to organize their thoughts and ideas. When I am just starting out on a project, I have a lot of ideas going through my head, but I don't usually try to organize them in any particular way that will make them useful to me further on down the road. Rather than just giving the reader one way to organize their ideas, the author presents several different methods so that each individual can find one that fits the way they work. This will help me as a designer because it will keep me from going with my first thought and allow me to develop my ideas further.

Nice Book Cover

I thought this was a pretty sweet book cover for how simple it is. This shows how conceptual you can get without causing your image to be too busy. Kerouac wrote this whole novel on one continuous typewriter scroll, so the designer has the road spilling out of the typewriter. This designer did a really good job of taking a great idea and executing it well rather than having a boring idea and trying too hard to make it look interesting.

Brainstorming Reading

• I thought the best point this reading made was to not throw out any ideas while you're brainstorming. I generally just go with the first "good" idea I have, which isn't usually effective. I've found that I end up with a better finished product when I have a a whole list of ideas that I can refer to, and build one big solid idea.
• My favorite kind of brainstorming is clustering or mapping. The reading suggests that this is the best form of brainstorming for visual thinkers, and I totally agree with that. Clustering allows you to think and write freely and then pull everything together once you run out of ideas.

Concept Statement (Part Two)

Audience Persona:
Richard is a middle-aged Midwestern man who owns a farm. He lives in an old house with his wife and drives a rusty red pickup truck. His two kids have recently left for college and his house is much quieter now.

Richard is proud of his Midwestern roots and does not go to to big city very often. His father owned a farm as well, and Richard has been working outside with is hands for as long as he can remember. Richard would love to leave the farm to his son, but doubts he will be interested.

Richard does not watch much TV, but when he does, he watches old western movies. These movies remind him of a time when life was slower and quieter and information was not so readily available to all of us.


Concept Statement (1):
Most Americans believe that the days of the "Wild Wild West" are long gone, but author Cormac McCarthy breathes new life to these forgotten stories. In his novels, McCarthy tells tales about ruthless characters and the lawlessness of the American Southwest.

Death don't have no mercy in this land
Y' know death don't have no mercy in this land, in this land
Come to your house, you know he don't take long
You look in the bed, you find your mama is gone
Death don't have no mercy in this land

-Rev. Gary Davis, Death Don't Have No Mercy

Concept Statement (2):
Step into Cormac McCarthy's world of interesting characters in Blood Meridian, The Road, and No Country For Old Men. Each story gives the reader an in-depth look into the minds of some of the most interesting figures in American fiction. The reader will be forced to challenge their own morals and the ideals of our society as a whole.

Concept Statement (3):
Follow a team of interesting characters across the expansive badlands of the American Southwest. McCarthy paints a detailed picture of landscapes and locations that mmost suburban Americans have never set their eyes on.

Concept Statement (Part One)

I speak of love that comes to mind:
The moon is faithful, although blind;
She moves in thought she cannot speak.
Perfect care has made her bleak.

-Allen Ginsberg, "An Eastern Ballad"

I was sheriff of this county when I was

twenty-five. Hard to believe. Grandfather
was a lawman. Father too. Me and him was
sheriff at the same time, him in Plano
and me here. I think he was pretty proud
of that. I know I was.

-No Country For Old Men

Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation

of men engaged in rash undertakings.

-Blood Meridian

It was a lone tree burning on the desert.

A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire.

-Blood Meridian

I always figured when I got older, God would sorta

come inta my life somehow. And he didn't. I don't blame him.

If I was him I would have the same opinion of me that he does.

-No Country For Old Men

If he is not the word of God God never spoke.

-The Road

People were always getting ready for tomorrow.
I didnt believe in that.
Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them.

It didnt even know they were there.

-The Road

Why don't you come up here, pony, now come on, please let's us go
I said, "Come up, get up now, please pony, now let's us go"
Let's we saddle on down on the Gulf of, of Mexico

-Son House, Pony Blues

So I’m going back to the place where we met
I’m going to find the beer bottle we left
Wedged in the limbs of the tree that we sat in
Wedged in the magnolia tree

-The Avett Brothers, Left on Laura, Left on Lisa

Death don't have no mercy in this land
Y' know death don't have no mercy in this land, in this land
Come to your house, you know he don't take long
You look in the bed, you find your mama is gone
Death don't have no mercy in this land

-Rev. Gary Davis, Death Don't Have No Mercy

Book Cover Research (Phase 1)

Series: a group or a number of related or similar things, events, etc., arranged or occurring in temporal, spatial, or other order or succession.

Sequence: the following of one thing after another; succession.

Sign: Physically represents a certain obvious idea.

(a picture of you is a sign of you)

Index: "Points" to the object but doesn't show it.

(dark clouds are an index for rain)

Symbol: A less specific image for a general idea.

(a cat is a symbol for animal)

Sign for

"Woodpecker"

Index for "Woodpecker"

Symbol for "bird"

Successful Book Jackets.....

A successful book jacket should have some sort of balance between image and type. Many ineffective book jackets have too much bad type, or confusing images. A viewer should be able to judge this book by its cover. A reader might be disappointed if they find out that a book is completely different than what they expected.

My Three Books...

1. Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy (Western)
2. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (Post-Apocalyptic)
3. No Country For Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy (Western)

Cormac McCarthy (born Charles McCarthy; July 20, 1933) is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, ranging from the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres. He has also written plays and screenplays. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He received a National Book Award in 1992 for All the Pretty Horses.

His earlier Blood Meridian (1985) was among Time Magazine's poll of 100 best English-language books published between 1923 and 2005 and he placed joint runner-up for a similar title in a poll taken in 2006 by The New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years. Literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Philip Roth. He is frequently compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner.

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, is a 1985 Western novel by American author Cormac McCarthy. It was McCarthy's fifth book and was published by Random House.

The narrative follows a teenage runaway referred to only as "the kid", with the bulk of the text devoted to his experiences with the Glanton gang, a historical group of scalp hunters who massacred Indians and others on the United States–Mexico borderlands in 1849 and 1850. The role ofantagonist is gradually filled by the demonic Judge Holden, an extremely large and intelligent man utterly devoted to violence and conflict. Much of the book is based on Glanton gang member Samuel Chamberlain's memoir My Confession, which has been criticized by historians as unreliable. Chamberlain is not a character in Blood Meridian. Critics considered Blood Meridian generally historically accurate, and it includes numerous references to contemporary occurrences.

Although the novel initially earned lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since become widely recognized not only as McCarthy's masterpiece, but also as one of the acclaimed American novels of the 20th century.

The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed all civilization and, apparently, almost all life on earth. The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006.

No Country for Old Men is a 2005 novel by American author Cormac McCarthy. Set along the United States–Mexico border in 1980, the story concerns an illicit drug deal gone wrong in a remote desert location. The title comes from the poem "Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats.^[1] The book was adapted into the 2007 film No Country for Old Men, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Associated Words

Fires, boat, houses, landscapes, apocalypse, alone, gray, delirious, father, son, angel, lost wife, others, cause, shopping cart, food, tarp, shoes, good guys, bad guys, cannibals, raiders, family, old man, clothes man, brutality, mexico, the kid, anti-heroic, gang, American Southwest, religious, warlike nature, lawless, bar fight, Judge Holden, Gnosticism, time passing, officers, retirement, Rio Grande, brief case, tracking chip, Mexicans, fate, water, trailer, wife, shoot out, desert, overexposed, coin, wit, Midwest pride, Bronco, symbol, Texas, Llewelyn, Chigurh, coin flip, fate, no motive, psychopathic, sunset, cow gun, black.

Apocalypse: a prophetic revelation, esp. concerning a cataclysm in which the forces of good permanently triumph over the forces of evil.

Dismal: causing gloom or dejection; gloomy; dreary; cheerless; melancholy: dismal weather.

Desensitize: to make indifferent, unaware, or the like, in feeling.

Fate: something that unavoidably befalls a person; fortune; lot: It is always his fate to be left behind.

Psychopathic: of, pertaining to, or affected with psychopathy

Unrelenting: not relenting; not yielding or swerving in determination or resolution, as of or from opinions, convictions, ambitions, ideals, etc.; inflexible: an unrelenting opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Haunting: remaining in the consciousness; not quickly forgotten

Tragedy: a dramatic composition, often in verse, dealing with a serious or somber theme, typically that of a great person destined through a flaw of character or conflict with some overpowering force, as fate or society, to downfall or destruction.

Lawless: being without law; uncontrolled by a law; unbridled; unruly; unrestrained

Gnosticism: a group of ancient heresies, stressing escape from this world through the acquisition of esoteric knowledge.

Tone/Model

east-----------------x---west

organic--x---------------high-tech

minimal--x--------------ornamental

retro---------x-----------contemporary

rough-x------------------clean

machine--------------x--handmade

trad-------x--------------non-trad

complex-------x---------easy

To Suggest...

• the American Southwest
• a Dismal landscape
• a slow pace of life
• a Ford Bronco
• the desert
• Midwest Pride