Agatha Christie

I got given the novel Unfinished Portrait written by Agatha Christie under the name of Mary Westvacott. As I had not read this book I read the plot summary on the internet. This gave me a brief understanding of what the storyline of the book was.
'In the midst of divorce, bereft of the only people in her life she cares for, Celia considers taking her life. But, while on an exotic island, Celia meets Larraby, a successful portrait painter, who spends a night talking with her, and learning her deepest fears. Larraby leaves Celia with the hope that he may be the one to help her come to terms with her past.'

I also looked at some of the original designs on the book cover. The image below is the first edition of the book which was published in 1934.

I wanted to take some of the colours from the original and bring them in to my design however to begin with I kept a simple black and white colour palette so that I could experiment with what typeface was the most appropriate and the layout of the cover. 
I decided to keep the design simple as a complicated cover wouldn't have been achievable in the time that I had to complete this task. This is why I chose s ample silhouette of a paint brush, with the added detail of a thin white line to define the shape. 

I then wanted to bring in the colour research that I had completed previously for a crime genre. I chose this deep red as it is suiting of the genre, however I decided it was not appropriate for Unfinished Portrait as it is overpowering therefore misleading of the storyline. From researching other designs for the book I noticed that many featured the 'Mary Westmacott' type in a larger format than the 'Agatha Christie'. This is because Agatha wrote under the name of Mary and it was not discovered that it was her for many years. I thought that this was an important element to have in the design.

I wasn't confident with the previous colour choice therefore I did a colour swatch of the blue background of the original design. I added the tabs of colour as I thought that there was too much negative space that removed the 'pop' that a book cover needs. 

Although I think that the blue suits the design of the cover as well as having involving an element of the history of the book, I thought that the shade of the book was too light and therefore not suitable for the genre of the book. Below you can see that I chose a darker blue as well as an off white for the background of the text. I chose this off white colour as I thought the white produced a glare that reduced the legibility of the text. 

I uploaded the above image to The Guardian as my contribution to the competition. From this quick task I have realised how much work can be done in a small amount of time and still finished with a professional standard. 





















Wikepedia, Unfinished Portrail (novel) Plot Summary 26.10.15