If there’s one lesson any aspiring designer should learn and one that real designers know the value of it’s to be able to work quickly and be able to identify good ideas quickly. The 10 minute graphic design project – Treasure Island book cover is a little exercise in just that.
Like most talents or skills, design requires practice, exercise and fresh challenges. Most of these we find in our daily work, but it’s nice to do work that just keeps you on your toes or just scratches a tiny idea itch.
This 10 minute graphic design project for a Treasure Island book cover is more of an itch scratcher than a real creative effort. That’s why it’s a 10 minute challenge, not a full blown piece of work, but it does illustrate the idea of finding a theme or thread of truth in a design concept and quickly woking it through to see if it has legs or working out which way round the idea works best.
For this the )very) basic idea was based around the Black Spot, the curse delivered to a sailor on a page of the Bible. Once you received the Black Spot it was only a matter of time before your end was due. And into this we quickly moved to combine map idea, a major plot device in the story and also the idea of an island. 10 minutes, no time for type, 2 ideas, now; back to work…