Responsive - Brief 1 - A Clockwork Orange

I've decided to do the penguin books "A Clockwork Orange" brief - to design a cover for the book. I wanted to do a book cover brief but wasn't particularly interested in the Folio Society's War Horse or the other penguin books so I've decided to do this as one of the "smaller" briefs, though due to the fact you have to read a book and I anticipate this will spark a lot of development work, I would consider this a distinctly medium sized brief.

Anyway I thought A Clockwork Orange would be fun/interesting to read, especially as I've not seen the film so I'm able to go into this without having much influence from the film (the Brief states they want to stay away from film elements/cliches that are often used on the front covers). The brief also said that the Typographic elements are important.

 I think that this is the kind of thing they're looking to avoid as the bowler hat and eyelashes have become a staple image of A Clockwork Orange - but are mostly related to the film adaptation.

I'm not particularly impressed by any of the covers I've seen so far for a Clockwork Orange. But obviously the book is very violent and you can't really put outright violence on the front cover of a book?

I have the copy in the centre and while it's not particularly illustrative I do appreciate the look of the text.  The middle cover though the milk relates well to the actual story I just find the whole thing bland. My personal favourite is the skeleton, I think it's just hilarious.

The image on the left of the screaming Alex I quite like - as it captures a well known, iconic scene from A Clockwork Orange. It's also probably as graphic as you could get for a book cover. While I like it, I'm not really sure if it fits the feel of the book - as the drawing looks more like it belongs in a graphic novel than on a book cover.

I think this cover communicates the dark humour of the book. The drawing is pretty lo-fi and fun to have a giggle at. I like the funky disjointed text too, it suits the tone of A Clockwork Orange.

I dig the minimalism of this. It contrasts with the utter chaos that is the storyline.