Our brief was to redesign the cover and front page piece for Penguin to be a part of their End Days Collection. I chose to do 'I am Legend' by Richard Matheson as the story appealed to me the most.
After reading the book, I identified the main themes within it; loneliness, isolation, death, religion and science. My next step was to go out and take photos to represent these themes for research and inspiration. I visited a derelict building, church/graveyard and looked at previous photos I took to represent isolation.
Although this was helpful, a strong enough idea didn't quite 'click' with it. So I re-read over my notes from reading the book and the main message is in the last line when he realises the irony of the role reversal and that he is now a legend while he dies. His death is brought on by a suicide pill he takes, and that's where my idea for this cover came from. It's so simple and intriguing without giving the plot away to first-time readers, yet symbolic to fans of the novel.
On the front page, I repeated the same image of the pill packet, but showed it empty to further encourage readers to find out what happens.
I am very happy with the final outcome and am going to re-visit this to produce a special edition cover made from vacuum forming the pill packet.
