Masque of the Red Death book cover
Designing a book cover for a story written in 1842 was interesting to do. My goal was to create a design that would be elegant, mysterious, classic, and colorful. This story mentions bright colors, wealthy groups of people, and death. The challenge was to balance these two ideas without losing clarity. Mixing a dark story with colors and wealth while capturing the rest of the story was a large task.
Sketching the idea of death, a soulless entity, was where I began, thinking it would make sense to include a mask. I tried everything, but nothing worked. I realized that not including a mask would help, because death has nothing to hide. Using shades of red for the robe and a stained-glass-like background made the character pop out.
My job is to design a book that people can judge by the cover- without reading a single page, they should know what they are going into. Keeping the classic theme from the story’s time and using modern elements made the book unique, as it can be interpreted beyond its time period.
