Reader, I Did Not Know

Reader, I Did Not Know book jacket and front and back covers. The book cover features a beige and grey castle on a cloudy day. The back cover is in dark blue and has a red title summarizing the novel and reviews. The book flaps has an about the author summary and picture, and it has featured books from the publisher.
Reader, I Did Not Know book cover with a shot looking upward at a beige and grey castle on a cloudy day in a grassy field. The title has blackletter typography and serif fonts in dark blue and pops of red.

This project was for a university course on typography where I designed a fictional book cover for a fanfiction of “Jane Eyre” called “Reader, I Did Not Know.” The project goal was to create a book cover that effectively communicated the book’s themes and content through design choices, while appealing to the right target audience and aligning with typical conventions of book covers in its genre.

The book’s genre is psychological drama mixed with romance and gothic themes, and its target audience is fans of the original novel, fans of those book genres, and women. This was reflected in typeface choices, where the blackletter title and serif text reflect the 19th century and give a mysterious yet traditional tone. The colors were chosen to give a serious, dramatic, and classic atmosphere while drawing attention to the right content. The image of the castle on a cloudy day gives a sense of foreboding, foreshadowing the main conflict of the book, which gives a sense of mystery and drama that is common among books of its genre. The content of the text calls back to the original novel, with a twist of the famous line from the epilogue of “Jane Eyre,” appealing to fans of the original novel.

The book cover was refined and prepared for print and was delivered via a packaged zip file containing a PDF and InDesign file. The final book cover achieved the main objective through its design choices that reflect its genres, era, and original novel, which appeals to audiences who enjoy psychological drama and Jane Eyre.