The Chronicles of Narnia
book cover
The Chronicles of Narnia is one of my favorite series of all time. As part of my senior Capstone project—Fonte Publishing—I designed three book covers that represented samples of the types of works Fonte would publish. This edition of The Chronicles of Narnia is indicative of the fiction/fantasy arm of Fonte.
custom typography.
Custom typography is the hero of this book cover. Using Libre Baskerville as the base typeface, I hand customized each letterform to positively drip with Aslan’s regality and Narnia’s richness. The contrast is higher, the curves are rounder, and each letterform was transformed to have tuscan-style serifs with flourishes below the baseline to add texture and a strong foundation.
Saturated.
The earliest encounter a Chronicles of Narnia reader has with another world is not in Narnia at all, but in a sort of gateway to other worlds. A house with many rooms—or, in this case, a wood with many ponds. Without giving too much of the story away, the reader follows the characters to many worlds within Lewis’s universe via this wood. The way Lewis describes the wood gives a sense of oversaturation—thick air, unimaginable greens, and a land so alive with growth that it threatens to swallow you up. As this series is also a gateway of sorts, I thought it interesting to channel Lewis’s gateway on the cover. I let the colors tell the story—vibrant greens and a touch of neon yellow on the edges of each page create a physical object that almost appears sentient in its richness. The form of Aslan himself emerges out of the vegetation on the cover, beckoning a new reader to explore the many worlds within.
As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool—not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others—a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive.