Penguin Book Cover Competition 2011 (process)

I entered the penguin book cover competition this year, but did not end up on the short list unfortunately. However, my fellow student Tom Rainford did, so a big round of applause for him! His design looks great and you can see it here.


We were asked to create an eye-catching and contemporary new book cover for 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel García Márquez.

l wanted to focus on a small section in the book that really moved me and put me in a special kind of mood:

“A short time later, when the carpenter was taking measurements for the coffin, through the window they saw a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling. They fell on the town all through the night in a silent storm, and they covered the roofs and blocked the doors and smothered the animals who slept outdoors. So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so that the funeral procession could pass by.”

I wanted to recreate this moment visually, so I decided to build model houses and make my own little town where these flowers could fall. Here are a few crappy pictures from the process: