OUGD505: Study Task 5- Book Analysis

For studio brief 2 we have to produce a book cover for an academic or theoretical text. My book of choice is Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins.

Book analysis

Book Blurb- 'Keats accused Newton of destroying the poetry of the rainbow by explaining the origin of its colours, thus dispelling its mystery. In this illuminating and provocative book, Richard Dawkins argues that Keats could not have been more mistaken and shows how an understanding of science in fact inspires the human imagination and enhances our wonder of the world'

There are many romantics, poets included, who believe that science destroys the beauty of an object. Dawkins heavily disagrees and believes that knowledge does not taken any wonder or delight away from anything, and in fact only adds to the objects initial beauty.

In the book he describes how the unweaving of the rainbow and the understanding of the light spectrum has lead to so many discoveries. From the understanding of stars, to the unweaving of sound waves Dawkins picks apart various scientific theories to reveal their beauty, wonder and delight, linking science to poetry and using various segments of poems to support his ideas.

Science is beautiful and Dawkins writes in such an artistic and engaging way, he never diminishes the science or dumbs down the facts but explains them in such a way that you can't help but be fascinated.

'we are granted the opportunity to understand why our eyes are open, and why they see what they do, before they close forever.'

 

Existing Cover Research/Analysis

Light is a key theme for the book and for it's design with both designs on the right contain the spectrum. Strangely though other than referencing the spectrum none of them have direct images of rainbows, instead they, as previously mentioned reference light and the spectrum as a whole.They all have a sense of authority, using very formalised serif type and a no nonsense layout, however I don't think either of the designs on the left create a sense of wonder or beauty, however the top left design does it to some extent and the bottom left achieves it through photography. The bottom left design is so far the most suitable for the book's title and content, using the natural wonder the Aura Borealis which captures wonder, beauty, light and the universe it captures the combination of science and poetry which is what the book is so keen to bring together.

In order to produce a design that is most suitable for the book I could too rely on the joining together of science and poetry, however I feel that because this has already been done successfully my design should try and represent the book through another concept/route.