Hunger Book Jacket Design

Project: Design the book jacket for Knut Hamsun’s Hunger.

Role: Designer

Hunger is a book whose themes include desperation, loneliness, and starvation. In order to represent these themes, I illustrated what I thought these emotions would look like. The illustration is composed of numerous loops in swaying directions, that together form a stark, emotional tapestry.

I wanted the loops to appear obsessive, which in its own process of creation, was slightly obsessive. Here is the original illustration:

Cover

 

For the book title, I experimented with various typefaces that tried to evoke a similar emotion as the illustration. In the end I decided to write the title myself. A typeface seemed to clean and ordered next to the loops. As I wrote the book title, I imagined I was the main character, starving and dazed.

Here is the final book cover:

 

hunger_book_cover

 

Full jacket:

 

HUNGER_Bookcoverspread