Book Cover Mock-up
Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare
The purpose of this project was to create an original, photographic book cover for a well known book or play. Instead of choosing the book or play to begin, students took photographs of objects and then found a book to fit. I choose to take photos of some dried roses I had stored away in the basement. To highlight the flower and its fragility, I choose a black background and used a focused light source. Since the flowers were fragile, some of the petals started to break while I was handling them. The broken pieces added to the symbolic nature of the rose and I eventually chose the play Romeo and Juliet. Another options was Beauty and the Beast, but I felt that the tragic nature of Shakespeare's work fit better with the theme.
The second part of the project was to create type that reflected the same feeling as the photograph. I decided to "shatter" the text to mimic the broken petals, taking the symbolism just a little further.
Original Photo of a broken rose
Alternate Version
