Title Page Design for 1984

An ongoing assignment for my typography class is a title page design, for book. I chose ‘1984’, by George Orwell, for my first book.

For Typography 1, one of our ongoing assignments  is the creation of title pages for a book. Our book choices are limited to the following, with no art or illustrations allowed:

  • The Great Gatsby—F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Scarlet Letter—Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • 1984—George Orwell
  • Heart of Darkness—Joseph Conrad
  • The War of the Worlds—H.G. Wells

We’ve gone through 1 assignment, and we will be presenting an update to the previous assignment and will be adding another book. My first book choice was 1984. Here are some designs.

1984 – Futura

The feedback from critique was this was too much for a title page, but might be OK for a cover.
This one was ok, but maybe the title should be bigger, and the author name in all caps and smaller.
This one captures all the feedback: larger book title and changes to the author name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although the last one captures, all the feedback, it’s not very interesting. Maybe that’s as it should be. I went to Barnes & Noble and saw that many title pages were fairly simple; many followed the style from the cover.

Also, at the time I created this, I thought we were limited to only using the fonts we are going to study in the class which includes Futura. That’s not the case, so in my updates, I found other fonts that I thought suited the title better.

 

Round 2 – Incorporating Feedback

As of now, I chose 2 fonts that I thought were closer to the feeling of the book. Modern yet restrictive. I chose Bebas Neue and Bauhaus 93 with Futura as my fonts.

Although I created a bit of a custom version of the numbers, 1984, in Bauhaus 93, to crop the ‘4’ slightly, I prefer the longer ‘nineteen eighty-four’, which I saw in a few examples of the book. It just seemed more polished and finished. I’m undecided if I will use a version with extra space between the title and the author. The publisher is still in Futura.

Updated 1984, using Bauhaus and Futura.
Updated Nineteen Eighty-Four in Bebas Neue.
Nineteen Eighty-Four with Bebas Neue, with the extra space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having looked at them side by side, I think I may go with the version with the extra space between the title and the author. It’s a little less “designy” and seems like it would be better for a title page, whereas when the author is close, it seems more like a cover page.