Penguin Book Cover Refinements

I went back to the book cover I designed for the non-fiction novel In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Original design below:

The illustrations on the cover are inspired by the tattoo’s that inked the two murderers in the novel. However, I had a couple other tattoo designs that I wanted to try out and see how they worked out on my cover design. I played around with another tattoo design of a snake curling around a dagger that was inked onto the character Perry.

I looked back to the original photos of the two murderers to attempt to make my design as realistic as possible in comparison to the actual tattoos on the criminals. I used this new image along with the original dragon and skull illustration to play around with a new cover design.

Using my new images I produced a design that was simpler and more aesthetically pleasing. Once I was happy with the layout and typographic hierarchy I put my final design into a mock up to see what it would look like around a book and was extremely satisfied with the result of my new design.

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