A Clockwork Orange – Penguin Book Cover

Below is my first rough attempt at the Penguin book cover design competition. This year it is for “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess – a story about a young man (Alex DeLarge) obsessed with rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven who is sent to prison for murder. While in prison he undergoes an experimental treatment sanctioned by the government to help “cure” him of his evil-ways. He is promised an early release but struggles to adapt to life back on the streets of London after he becomes a pawn for the government. The story is rife with messages and themes about corruption, violence, brain-washing, governmental scheme and deception. In response to these themes, with specific approach to the government and corruption (a key premise of the book) I designed by first rough visual:

The design take some inspiration from the film as well – the scene where he is being processed in prison and a prison guard has him bent over to perform a routine check up his anus. The image is striking as it is crude because of the acts’ blatant disregard for personal space and freedom (a key theme in the book) – a common and more inappropriate term for “leave me alone” is “crawl out of my arse”. I felt that having an image that resembles (in a comic way) how the government and the law is all over everyone’s case like they are in Burgess’ book, the message would be clear and striking. Further development on the piece would consist of some of the bending figures to have different skin tones (showing racial equality) and possibly having one of the figures be a robot – this is because Alex is essentially turned into one after his treatment being unable to feel “real” emotion or enjoy what he did before being sentenced.

On showing this design to Ian in a group tutorial, i was given some advice on improving the design in terms of its execution. First of all, the image is too similar to the film and i was told that the cover should reflect the premise of the novel – not the film. This was the most important aspect that needed changing however the choice of imagery wasn’t a problem –  i just need to develop it’s execution. The type choice also isn’t appropriate for body text that must be read extensively therefore this should be changed/developed also. Personally I am quite unhappy with the design. I think the idea was a lot more attractive in my head that when i actually tried to execute it. Also my opinion on the use of orange in the cover has also changed – i didn’t use it because I thought it would be too cliche, however I think with more development the use of orange could actually work really well.

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