GRA230: Typography Book cover

For this assignment, we were to design a book cover for a novel from a selected list. I chose the book 'Slaughterhouse 5'. It's a story about a U.S. soldier who gets captured by German soldiers and imprisoned in a disused slaughter titled "Slaughterhouse 5". Synopsis here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five

We had to design 5 covers as rough concepts and then choose the best design and refine it as our final cover.

Initial designs:

Final Concept:

I like the Stencil typeface because it reminds me of the way military units would mark crates for rations, medicine and weapons, given the fact that this book is set during WW2, I figured that typeface would be appropriate. The deep red is a very eye-catching colour, it shows the aggressive, gory nature of the book. The red to black gradient symbolizes the "out of body" experiences the main character has during the story; believing he travels backwards and forwards in time, jumping to all these different scenes including being abducted by aliens to a docile, post-war lifestyle.