Here is my entry for the Penguin Adult Awards, 2013 - The Big Sleep. Taking inspiration from the previous Raymond Chandler series designed by Steven Marking, a style similar to Saul Bass.  I have also been a big fan of Rob Ryan's delicate paper cuts and I thought I would combine the two styles to convey what the story means to me. 

I sketched out the overall design on a thick stock piece of paper. I wanted to include General Sternwood's wheel chair, so I used a found photo online and lightly spray mounted the paper onto the design. This way I could get a realistic looking wheel chair that was part of the period when this book was set. I then used a scalpel to cut out the design. Trying not too over cut and make mistakes.

It took longer than expected, however the effects that I was after worked really well. The next step was to spray the stencil black so I could scan the images into computer. 

After sparying, it produced a rough negative. It kind of worked but the overspray made the text hard to read. 

I then opened up the scanned image up in Illustrator then made a live trace of the stencil. I then began to edit the type and smooth up some of the edges as the scalpel cuts were rough. I then copied the front cover with the wheel chair and flipped the image, so the back and front of the book reflected. This worked well with the floral/green house theme. The spine then became the a tree which worked really well. 

I added an ocean/sea photograph at the back of the stencil to create some atmosphere, then changed the layer options on the stencil so some of the water texture would be apparent. The reason for adding the water was due to the part of the novel where the Sternwood's car is pushed off the pier into the sea.