This was a project in my freshman year Illustrator course. In a previous class, I had been asked to redesign the cover of a book and make the new cover by hand. The challenge was now to take the handmade cover and digitize it in Illustrator. I chose to do a unique take on a classic and a favorite of mine: “The Shining” by Stephen King.
While doing research for the cover I noticed one thing about all of the existing redesigns for this book: most of the covers had elements that were from the movie and weren’t even in the book. For example, the twins or the ax are all heavily associated with this title, but neither of those themes were included in the book. I decided if I was doing a book cover redesign I wanted it to be based around a concept that could be found in the book.
Though my original hand-done cover concept took a long time, ultimately I am happy with how things came out. I think the illustrations represent the concept of the book really well, and the simple approach to the illustrations suits the style. The color palette was simple but reflects the ominous tone of the story.
