Critique: Book Covers

I've never designed a book cover before, but I've always wanted to. I love designing department pages, but designing book covers is a great way to mix up our usual design work.


The book I am designing a cover for is called "Madam Chairman: Mary Louise Smith" which is a biography on Mary Louise Smith, the Iowa grandmother who was selected by President Gerald Ford to serve as the chairman of the Republican National Committee. We were assigned to make 20 rough sketches of completely different ideas, so keep in mind, emphasis on the 'rough.'

I struggled to come up with 20 completely different ideas. It was especially difficult because I've never done this before. I was given just one image to work with, so I played around with some photography covers as well as some illustrations and typography covers. I found that I liked my beginning covers the best and then my ideas got progressively worse... hence my license plate idea (sorry Nick!)