kaws book design.
mandate.
The aim was to create a book cover, and layout spreads for an artist, and to make it represent that artist graphically. In this case KAWS.
He is a contemporary artist from New York, since the early 90s, known for his cartoonish characters and reinterpretations of pop culture icons.
The intent was to represent his journey as an artist through visually striking design. By combining some essence of his style and a street graphic sense. The design approach is bold and colourful with a typographic feel, using colours drawn directly from his work. Combining graphics and techniques from his past to him now.
design
making.
KAWS started his whole career in the streets, tagging different ads in New York city, adding his own characters to them. This cover concept is based on that. As the book represents his journey as an artist, I had the idea to keep this concept but flip it to him. The book cover shows his face and the slipcase has one of his graffiti characters.
In the end, it is like he tagged himself. For the layouts I wanted to keep a sense of city/ street graphic, using some bold typography and making the layouts dynamic by adding the endnotes to the side of the page.
outcome.
While considering the time it would take them. To have a good end result, for the due date. Also making sure that they understood what I needed to get done.
In the end, throughout this process I enjoyed working with different suppliers; printers, a bookbinder, and another company for the plexiglass slipcase. Creating documents to send them, getting quotes and managing my time.
