The Crystal Ball is a short story by The Brothers Grimm. I was tasked with creating a cover for the story as well as type setting the pages. The goal was to create a minimalistic cover, relying heavily on the type to create a clean design with the use of very little graphics.
If you haven’t read this short story, it is about the classic fairy tale fight between good and evil. So the hope was to convey that on the cover itself without spoiling the whole story. There were a few revisions made on the cover itself to make sure it flowed well and looked really slick. Mostly, it was the placement of the graphic and the title on the front cover. For the pages themselves, it was really important that the type itself gave off the same feeling as the content, while the font is still readable, it also gives off that semi whimsical vibe.
The colour palette needed to match the look and feel of the actual content of the book, so a somewhat mystical and magical colour combination was used. The fonts also had to match the contents of the book. Three fonts were paired together to create a really solid type trio. The title font pairs well with the sans serif used below, as well with the body copy used on the cover as well as inside the book.Coming full circle to the fight between good and evil, this was represented on the cover with the ligature of the R and B each reaching for the crystal ball. This was the only graphic used on the cover, also being used to frame the front and back cover in the corners. To keep the inside of the book clean, the only graphics used was a small swash included with the body copy font.
