Hiking National Parks Book Jackets

A redesign of Falcon Guides’ national parks book jackets.

Duration

Four weeks

Tools

InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator

This assignment was to take a series of books with a related topic and redesign the jackets.

I selected the book jackets from the Falcon Guides to national parks. Falcon Guides have a system to their design, so each of the books of the different national parks has a cohesive feel and is easily recognized on the shelf. As an avid hiker, I thought the original single cover images did not show how each trail, scenery, and journey differed inside the book.

When I was drawing drafts of the covers, a common factor of a shoe was repeatedly showing up in my design. I did not want to use photographs of the national parks; instead, I thought of using the actual hiking trail as the background and overlaid a person-sized footprint on top of the map as if someone were hiking on the trail. The colors used for each cover are related to the colors of the corresponding national park. I used a rough typeface that felt worn to be the title paired with a san serif for the body information.