This was a live brief with the author of the book – Simon J. Blake. Firstly, I would highly recommend this book, as it is simply incredible and intriguing. It's based on a true story and I felt that as the author had done such a fantastic job setting up the scene and reviewing the case notes and interviewing real key figures in the crime that I wanted to put myself out there and get in contact with the author by offering to redesign the book cover.

 

This was a project where I simply offered to do a redesign of the book jacket as I thought the original book jacket didn't quite fit with the theme of the book. It was quite generic for the "crime" and "mystery" genre and didn't really encompass any of the other themes. It was almost as if the designer hadn't read the book or the synopsis and was just told its a crime/unsolved murder etc. 

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I had the opportunity to have a long conversation with the author about his book and what he wanted the book cover to encompass. Through these chats I was able to narrow down key elements of the story that would intrigue the readers but not spoil too much. I simply "set the scene" on the front cover.