I've had a lovely Christmas break which has felt luxuriously long. As well as working on my flat, I also wanted to try and do something booky designy.
This December, BBC4 re-broadcast The Box of Delights to mark the series' 40th anniversary. The six-part series is an adaptation of then Poet Laureate's children's fantasy adventure, published in 1935. The book is actually a sequel, to a book called The Midnight Folk, but it is The Box of Delights that really seemed to stick and it remains a well-read classic of British children's fiction. Perhaps it is that book's attachment to the Christmas seasons which makes it the more enduring.
The 1984 series was an ambitious endeavour. It sticks closely to the book (indeed it doesn't even worry about tidying up points that only make sense if one knows the story of the unadapted The Midnight Folk, like how Kay knows the villains), and that means it's a frankly bonkers mix of magic, history, technology and adventure - elements which make for an incongruous mix, but which all share one quality: straining the special effects budget. The BBC spent a lot of money on it: a then-unprecedented million pounds.
Viewed from 2024 the ambitious parts are sometimes really impressive, but often charmingly hokey. But for me the series loses none of the magic for all that. In fact, it gains a meta-layer of more magic. It's like watching theatre, the lack of literalism in the visuals doesn't distract but only invites your imagination in further and lets you marvel at the ingenuity of the filmmaking while still wholeheartedly investing in the story it depicts.
So I wanted to bathe in that Christmassy feeling of The Box of Delights with a go at a cover.
I started sketching out a design roughly in Photoshop, based around one of my favourite devices: a text ribbon. The idea formed of a composition with the titular box at the bottom, lid open, and main character Kay being drawn inside. In the book, Kay is able to use the box to shrink himself to mouse-size, and to pass into, or perhaps through, the box as a kind of portal to other lands and points in history.
The 'ribbons' for the text could come off his scarf as it flew out behind his motion, and other images from the book could be placed among its twining shape.
Previous cover projects have halted at this point as they encounter the gap between my vision as a designer and my technique as an illustrator.
That is, I can draw perfectly well and for some subjects and purposes to a professional level. But there's plenty that my skills and inclinations won't stretch to.
I draw on Adobe Illustrator, a Vector program. It's well suited to objects and buildings, and as for people I have at least one approach that I think works well. But it's time consuming, relies on photo reference especially for clothing, and not really suited to every purpose.
I was aware that this issue is once again going to raise its head with this design, but nonetheless I've pressed forwards into Illustrator.
What I have so far is pleasing enough to encourage me to seek out a solution for styling the drawings.
I thought this Waterstones work might represent a happy balance between my above-mentioned techniques/styles.
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