Jane Eyre
Book Design: Classics
Tools
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe InDesign
I set out to create a redesign of Jane Eyre that could bring in new readership to this classic of literature. In the creative brief, my objectives were to capture the essence of Charlotte Brontë’s novel while exploring visuals that would allow the book to be marketed to new generations. The solution I came to was a cover that is bold in its typography and color, while still retaining a classicism in its botanical illustration.
Cover Design
The cover features a digital illustration of heather that I created to reference the Yorkshire Moors setting of the novel. The plant winds in and out of the title and author name—a wildness of spirit that reflects the internal world of Jane. We are with her on her journey of self-discovery and love, and the heather is a perfect representation of some of the inner struggles she faces.
The illustration is set against a bright coral background and the vines wind through the title in a warm yellow. I wanted this cover redesign to be the furthest away from stuffy victorian sitting rooms and have it pull you in quick. I set the text in Ofelia Display; a sans-serif that is straightforward but with distinguished touches, like the drop of the crossbar on the uppercase ‘A’ or the elegant curvature of the lowercase ‘f’.
Covers for previous editions of Jane Eyre
Full hardcover Mechanical for Jane Eyre
Original Illustration
Mediums
Digital Illustration
I created an illustration for the cover of Jane Eyre that would be a nod to the botanical illustrations of the time period. This form of art was one of the few that women in Victorian England would have been instructed in—watercolors of domestic subjects such as flowers.
I took this tame subject and chose to illustrate a wild and scrubby heather. This solidly grounds the books on the Yorkshire Moors where wild heather blooms in a rugged landscape. I blew up the illustration, duplicated it and wound it through the letters on the cover where it casts shadows on the glyphs. The flower becomes unbridled which is truer to the journey of our protagonist.
Example of a botanical illustration and Yorkshire moors with blooms of heather.