"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" is a short story by Colombian writer and author Gabriel García Márquez. The story involves the eponymous character who appears in a family's backyard on a stormy night. The author describes what follows, detailing the reactions of the family, the town, and outside visitors who believed the man to be an angel.
Since the story is set in the past, I tried to imagine how photographic evidence of his muddy, threadbare wings would have looked like if taken with an old analog camera. Therefore, I took some shots of stained feathers and digitally applied a sepia tone for a nostalgic touch. I then designed the book cover combining those images with a font that imitates cursive handwriting for title, spine and quote in order to reinforce the vintage aesthetic.
Penguin Random House Student Design Competition 2017
"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee centers on Atticus Finch’s attempts to prove the innocence of Tom Robinson, a black man who has been wrongly accused of raping a white woman in 1930s Alabama.
Having in mind that the story is told from a little girl’s point of view, my aim was to design an unusual wooden pendant, resembling a childhood toy at first, but holding a recondite meaning. Connected to the bird by thin strings, there are a rifle, a gun and an arm, representing relevant themes within the story, such as protection, safety, moral authority, loss of innocence, racial injustice and compassion.
I chose dark yellow to represent youth, using it as an accent color and extra element of vibrancy as opposed to the blue on the background.
Penguin Random House Student Design Competition 2017
"In Cold Blood" is a non-fiction novel by American author Truman Capote. It details the 1959 murders of four members of the Herbert Clutter family in the small farming community of Holcomb. Interviews to residents and investigators assigned to the case and thousands of pages of notes resulted in an in-depth analysis of the case and crime perpetrators: Richard Hickock and Perry Smith. I drew Capote as a skeleton (a spiritual connection between death and reality), wearing his signature eyewear and fedora, between the two murderers, aiming to represent his investigative nature, an ability that brought to light more than just the story of a murder.