Americanah & Antigone Book Covers

Two redesigns of book covers for existing titles: one classic novel “Antigone” and one contemporary novel “Americanah.” Both involve going against the nature of the system surrounding the protagonists, and them fighting for what they believe is truly right.

The story of Americanah has themes of clashing senses of identity, and uncertainty as to who Ifemelu is becoming. To illustrate this, I used a color palette of a very bright and dark gray with a red as an accent color. The two opposing colors represent the divide between the two cultures she lives within, and the texture of ripped paper going through the middle of the cover further accentuates this conflict.

The story of Antigone explores the difference between divine and human law, and the nature of fate. Inevitably, tragedy strikes and many people die. To reflect this, I used a sharp color palette of bright red, black and white. This provided a grim sense to the book, which would be further backed up with my illustration. From there, I created a vector illustration of a woman being hung by puppet strings. This is done to convey the inevitability of death as well as the influence of fate.