AUDIOBOOK
RE-DESIGN
ROLE
Vector Illustration, Branding, Typographic Design
Design new Spotify audiobook covers for all six of Jane Austen’s novels. This is a hypothetical project.
SCOPE
Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects
During my last semester of college, I had the opportunity to take an English class about Jane Austen — one of my favorite authors. Throughout the course, we read and analyzed all six of her novels and subsequent films, remakes, fan work, and adaptations.
Part of the course was a spring break trip to England and Wales, in which we immersed ourselves in Austen’s world. Many of the homes and sites we visited inspired my stylistic choices.
PROCESS
Though many of Austen’s works feature romance within them, most are social commentary on the 19th-century English gentry. Two commonalities can be threaded across all of her works — the story of women at this time and the estates of this time. Austen’s works take place at very specific places, usually inspired by places she, herself, had visited, and focus on her herione’s experience within that specific environment and how that drives her plots.
I wanted to highlight these two elements, specifically, which is why I chose to design a silhouette of a woman’s portrait(s) and why an estate stands in the middle of these portraits. Each of the vector-illustrated homes are based off real gentry homes in England.
COLOR SELECTION
Creating consistency became one of the biggest challenges in this project. The number one question I had was how to make each cover stand out individually while also signaling to listeners that it was part of a series.
I explored using one large color palette and having different colors dispersed throughout each design. I explored having each silhouette as a different color, while each estate remained in the same color styling. Eventually, I landed on each background being a different color and including a distinct wallpaper for each.