A Sleepy Haze

After seeing some people post images of movies, books, and CD covers with great examples of graphic design on them, I decided to take a look at my own collection for a change and see if there was anything worthy to blog about. I'm a HUGE Stephen King fan, but a lot of his covers are extremely weird and all over the place. This newer publication, however, is a great example of graphic design, in my opinion. The title "Doctor Sleep" is exemplified by the style of the typography. All of the letters are made up of what appears to be a smoke or haze. When we think of the words "sleep" and "dream," what do we envision? Movies depict dream sequences usually with an accompanied haze or foggy filter, sometimes even a smoky border around the frame. Therefore the smoke-styled typography goes well with the accompanied title of the novel. The typography also gives the cover a mood. Since the letters are wispy and moving in all directions, you would assume it would create a chaotic feel, but seeing as how smoke moves in a slow manner, there's a very calm and tranquil feeling just by looking at the letters. The main focus is obviously the text based on the colors used. The background is very dark and the text is white and stands out in the contrast. The only image we see used is of a woman in red behind the letters. We only see her in the center of the cover however, and the rest of her image fades out everywhere else. This doesn't detract the focus from the text. The splash of red gives a sort of dangerous tone, possibly an alert, which contrasts with the feel of the text. The function of this cover is to grab attention from the public and sell copies of the book. Stephen King's name is huge and takes up half of the cover, which people immediately see. With his reputation, just seeing he has a new novel released is enough to have people reaching for their wallets. It worked on me, seeing as how I still have yet to read it, yet it is sitting on the table right next to me as I type up this blog. Congrats, Mr. King, you've done it again.

The jacket design for the book was done by Tal Goretsky, and the jacket illustration was by Sean Freeman.