In my moodboard, I collected:
My sketches focused on developing different typographic layouts and figuring out the illustrative component.
Images I used were courtesy of amazing creatives from Unsplash:
While developing my Photoshop composition, I wanted to create something that would capture the moody, mysterious feel of the novel. The three images blended nicely and worked out together perfectly. I also adjusted the colors to suit the complementary yellow-purple color scheme that would further emphasize the vibe of the moonlit night.
Next, I focused on developing digital roughs, which all featured a different typographic layout. Each had a different feel: modern, traditional, spooky, and boring.
I ended up with this final layout.
It features a combination of a traditional bookish typeface Bookmania and a modern Trade Gothic. This combination was chosen to both pay homage to the original traditional British vibe of the book and to modernize it for current audience.
The most important piece is the type treatment for the word Murder: I wanted it to loom over the house, foreshadowing the events of the book. The symmetrical loopies on the M and R letters are also not accidental: they symbolize the main character's, detective Hercule Poirot, mustaches, which is his best identifiable trait.
For my book cover, I had two options: to stay with the movie poster layout or make something completely different. In my sketches, I explored both options.
The process for this part of the project was extremely hard for me. I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. First, I developed four completely different layouts. I received very different feedback: some urged me to keep the movie poster layout, yet I wanted to go in the experimental typographic direction. However, at this stage I realized that my hero layout with the keyhole wasn’t working since the keyhole shape didn’t allow for the type to be readable. With a very helpful piece of feedback, I got an idea to try featuring a looking glass. It promised a simpler shape while being in line with the detective genre of the novel. I still had many challenges while working with it, however I finally managed to get to my final layout.
A lot of work went into the book specimen.
I chose to keep Trade Gothic for drop caps, page numbers, chapter names and chapter numbers for consistency with the cover. I selected Adobe Garamound Pro for its great readability, a traditional feel, and for how nicely it paired with Trade Gothic.
I ended up with 3 chapters and 28 total pages because I didn’t want to break up the original chapters of the book. Fixing all the runts and widows and orphans was a lot of work, but I managed to fix them all. Tidying up the text was a really fun process for me, even though in the middle of it I decided to change my body text point size and had to do it all over again.
You can read the electronic version of the book specimen here.
© Anna Parkhomenko 2025. All rights reserved.
