For this project I chose to create a cover for a travel book that gives information about Europe. I chose to do a travel book because when I was planning my time in Europe books about the areas I was going were extremely helpful in finding small excursions to do and places to go, and so I decided it would fit well with my overall topic of European travel. I mostly let the photos that I had from my time in Europe influence the design. I took time to look through all of the ones I had and see which would work best together and look the most visually appealing while still being cohesive as a whole.
In terms of design principles that influenced me I chose to stick with leading lines as the key guiding principle in the work. I worked leading lines into the work by flipping the orientation of the map background so that the borders of each nation and the overall border of the map would lead the eye down into my selected photographs along the bottom of the “cover”. I also chose to work with the rule of thirds in my design as well. I did this by ensuring that the line of photos went across the middle of the bottom third of the work, while the text elements were split between the top and middle third. This use of the rule of thirds ensured that there would be no overload in any one area of the work.
For the actual visual elements for this project I used my own pictures for the line across the bottom of European sights and then I went into the creative commons to find a more stylized version of a map of Europe that I could use. It was very important to me that for the actual photos of Europe I used my own material and my own photographs.
The map of Europe was obtained through the creative commons and was originally published by Ars Electronica and is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Cassandra Barnes 