Responsive: In Cold Blood - Brainstorm

Who killed the Clutters?

The book tells a story about the case of the killings of the Clutter family in Holocomb, a village in Kansas. These two people are Perry Edward Smith and Richard Eugene Hickock, who both met at prison and was serving their parole at the time when they committed the crime. Capote vividly put together a humanising narrative which allows the reader to sympathise with the bad guys in the story. The plot of the story can be summarised by a quote: 'The American dream turning into the American nightmare'. 

The Clutter case research board

I wrote down some quotes that I think are significant to the story, and got carried away, so I ended up with this mess. (No you wouldn't want to read this page!) I can't find anything inspiring when going through the quotes because most of them are way too specific.

The Mess

Started on a fresh page, I tried to filter these messy information I have written down and make sense of the whole story. I ended up with this diagram, which you shouldn't read too because it is still a mess. Due to all these mess, I decided not to pursue a quote-based cover design. I think I dug in too deep into the matter, and I become overwhelmed by all the facts. 

This is not helping

I've learned my mistake and moved on from the quotes to creating colour board. I would probably not go with this colour board because the cool tone is not striking. Even worse, it makes the design looks unattractive. 

I like the contrast of black and white, but instead of blue I would probably use red or orange for the third colour.

Colour Board

Layouts 

I tried to incorporate Perry's Boots - being an evidence that is pivotal to the story - to some of the initial cover designs.

Here are some of the things that I came up with. I could not get creative with the boot and the footprint since I can only play around with the placement of these two objects. The boot kind of give away a spoiler to the audience too, so it is not a good idea to introduce the boot on the book cover.

Layouts with prison bars and corners. It is definitely hard to make a cover that does not spoil the story, but this is a more obvious spoiler so it does not give away as much specificity as Perry's boot. I like the design on the left, but I think it does not have the 'Penguin Books' look because the four lines representing the bars and the 4 dead Clutters seems to be distracting the buyer from the things that happens at the back of these lines.

At a few instances in the story, Capote compares the two convicts' behaviour and physique to that of reptiles. This could probably work as a cover design for In Cold Blood because reptiles are cold-blooded creatures. Readers could easily identify the title to the cover design, but it could be misleading, and not remain true to the story. For instance the reptilian tongue licking the farm house could be mislead the buyers to think of the story being more of a science fiction genres, probably of alien invasion or some kind of mutated form of life.

Some other scribbles of layouts mindlessly done.

Tried to incorporate blood stains in this design to symbolise the people who died in the story. At the back of the book is Perry's and Dick's while at the front are the blood of the 4 Clutters killed at the beginning of the story, arranged such that it looks like the arrangement of their family photo on the newspaper. This design is symbolic, but other than that I could not see its potential to be aesthetically developed.

FINALLY SOMETHING THAT I LIKE!

After spending a lot of time drafting through bad layouts, I finally came up with something worthwhile. In the end, I decided not to create a literal design, and take a more impression based approach to design the book cover.

I was unexpectedly inspired by what I had for breakfast this morning. Scrambled eggs! I definitely think that this idea is brilliant. Well, probably not to others, but it keeps me going for this project, so I would like to go with this idea.

Basically, the Clutter's case is like a cracked egg. The two criminals are 'broken' in someways before comitting the crime as they serve in prison. By killing the Clutters, they have 'broken' the comfort of living peacefully in the small village of Holocomb, and even causes paranoia throughout the whole Kansas area. The blood oozing out is a metaphor of the utter fate of both Perry and Dick, who died by being hanged at the gallows in the end. Like a cracked egg, once broken it is impossible to put it back together.

The next step to take is to decide on which medium to use for the book cover design. I thought of using textured background with simple iconic symbol just like the alternative film posters inspiration in the previous post.