Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a science fiction book published in the late 1800s by Edwin Abbott Abbott about a square living in a 2D world who gets his worldview disrupted by a sphere.
I redesigned this book's cover by taking into account themes of flatness, order, and disruption and assembling cut paper.
In addition to the book cover, I created a landing page prototype for Flatland.
Paper Collage, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, and Figma. 2020.
The Challenge
Redesign a the cover of a book from the 1800's with a fresh take for today's generation of young readers.
Goal Setting
First, I set my intentions for rethinking the cover design:
• staying true to the story
• making it marketable to younger audiences.
Ideation
After noting the book's important motifs, I explored one ("order") to think of design possibilities.
Sketches
The final concept includes:
• a grid to reinforce the "order" motif, and because the main character is a square
• a circle breaking up the grid to reference the sphere coming to Flatland
• geometric shapes because the book is based in geometric principles, and Flatland is filled with other 2D shape characters
• paper collage to emphasize flatness
Unused Concepts
Paper Collage Process
My process was sketching out the final book design, creating the collage mockup in Illustrator to print out, and using that print to cut and assemble the cardstock paper shapes.
Final Book Cover Mockup
Original Covers
