Penguin Brief
Penguin Student Awards 2018
(Closing date - 6th March 2018)
As part of the short response brief 503
Adult non-fiction cover award - A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Book is aimed at readers with no prior knowledge, non specialist. Can't be childish but cant ailienate the reader. It explains a range of subjects in cosmology, including the Big Bang, black holes and light cones, to the non-specialist reader. The book became a bestseller and sold more than 10 million copies.
The book was first published in 1988, 30 years ago. The new design needs to break boundaries, it needs to have popular appeal and it cant resemble a school text book.
I have chosen to design this cover because I studied Physics at A-level so have an existing understanding of the topics in the book. This meant that I could begin the idea generation and the design process while reading the book to understand the tone of voice. It also meant that I could use this as a short turn around brief.
Research
Topics covered in the book
Laws of gravitation
Laws of motion
Special relativity
red shift and the doppler effect
The big bang
frequency and interference
subatomic particles (quarks)
Radioactivity
Black holes
thermodynamics
String theory
All of these topics have assosiated visual elements that could be used in the book cover
Past covers
the past covers are old fashioned and make the book seem very heavy. the book, however, is quite easy to follow and understand and the tone of voice is light. He tells stories to make the theories easier to understand and the topics are slightly simplified, he doesn't go into the mathematics.
The cover I design will make the book more accessible as it is aimed at an audience with no prior knowledge of physics. I will use some of the topics covered in the book as inspiration for the design.
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