A Brief History Of Time - A Very Short Brief

'We are looking for a cover design that breaks boundaries in the way that the book did when it was published 30 years ago, in 1988. It should not look like a textbook you read at school! This is a revolutionary science book with popular appeal. If you can get your hands on a copy of the book in order to get a sense of the narrative and concepts this will only help to inspire your design. The cover should feel timeless, confident and appeal to a whole new generation of readers.'

For a short submission I decided to develop a cover for A Brief History of Time using a very modern, sci-fi style of cover, which was fairly spontaneous. I wanted to experiment with something that would appeal to an audience interested in comics and space and present the novel as bold and fantastical.  The two black circles are to reference black holes and their fluctuation in size. Each strip and segment of text has been aligned to link together with every other aspect of the design.

After a small crit it was suggesting that using the S of HISTORY for the beginning of Stephen Halking's name was an interesting idea, but wasn't immediately apparent upon looking at the design. It almost appears like 'tephen Halking'. So the S was rotated which worked much better and added something interesting to the side title. The small black circle was also moved further from the centre as feedback suggested the circle felt too close to being central and just felt 'off' in the original design.