I started to designing the book weeks ago, and for this I am very grateful as I discovered quickly how many things needed to be changed in order to fit in the book and work successfully with my layout.
One of which was the lino print below. Originally I planned on using the image on the right as a small illustration to be integrated with text however, when I started to format the book I found it worked better as a full page spread and decided to try printing it in the inverted colours. This ended up looking really nice as a spread in the book, adding something new to break up what had come before
I had also initially planned to have another double page spread in the book, but once everything else had been put in place, I found I had no space for it and trying to add it in would have looked forced and it would have brought down the flow of the book. I’m glad I figured this out before painting it as it meant I had more time to focus on fixing and perfecting other illustrations, such as the severed head as I have talked about previously.
I really tried to stick to a simple design for this book as I didn’t want the text to over power the illustration. Also the book will actually be quite large so it really doesn’t need to dominate to much of the page. I’ve tried to vary up the spreads in order to keep the viewer interested.
I also spent some time looking into the title page. As I’m not having a title on the front cover (I am having a fabric cover and a the circular lino print as a wrap), I had to plan something different to use here. As the title is Sahin, the name of a character, I wanted an image to go with it that would either represent him or something important in the story. I decided to use the symbol of a snake as I believe it has connotations relating to the story an my illustrations. The story comes from Angela Carter’s anthology of fairytales about women with a feminist point of view. This story in particular portrays the women to be clever, cunning and overall smarter than the men of the tale, in particular smarter than Sahin. I therefore used the Snake to represent Sahin for its connotations of the male phalice and evil – a symbol for the patriarchy. Sahin is also portrayed as a blue snake in the bath house seen where he and his eldest brother metaphorically watch over the women.
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