Artist Inspiration - Peter Adlington
- laurenjadesmith
- Mar 8, 2023
- 4 min read
Peter Adlington is an art director at Fabel & Fabel, as well as an illustrator and book cover designer. I discovered Peter Adlington's work because he has designed book covers for my favourite author. Matt Haig. I am currently reading his book, "The Possession of Mr Cave" which inspired me to write this blog. I am in awe with the design work on these book covers that Adlington has created for Matt Haig's books and I believe, apart from his great writing skills, the book designs has a great role in actually making me want to read in my spare time. I am going to focus mostly on the book covers for Matt Haig as those are the book covers which I naturally love most, however I am still going to look at a few other covers which inspire me too.
As mentioned previously, the book I am currently reading is "The Possession of Mr Cave". This book cover inspires me significantly due to the surrealistic approach of having a woman dangle from the strings of a violin. As I am only a small margin into this book, I am unaware of how the content of the cover relates to the context of the book, however I am sure that all will be revealed to me soon. The colour palette of purple and light blue works significantly well at conveying the emotion of the book, because even though I am only a few pages in, I can instantly tell that the reoccurring theme is quite dark, gloomy and intense.
The pointilism technique of shading on the light reflection and the violin is a unique and inspiring approach. I remember using a similar technique to this in an Apollo 11 brief which I completed back at West Suffolk College. This technique worked significantly well when I previously used it myself, and looks successful in Adlington's work, so I think it would be fitting to revisit this technique in future work.
Another Matt Haig book cover which inspires me significantly is "The Humans". I may have a slight bias towards this because it is my favourite book of all time (I couldn't recommend this book more, an AMAZING read). The limited yet relevant detail and shading on this design applied to this book cover allows the design to look very smooth, clean and crisp. The attention to detail, where it is only obvious after a long look at the design, is extremely effective. Using the shapes of the land on Earth to show the side profile of faces is an interesting, surrealist approach. Surrealism is a technique which I am noticing to be a reoccurring theme is Adlington's work. Adlington uses analogous colours in this book cover, resulting in a visually pleasing and harmonious design.
"The Last Family in England" is the next book on my list of Matt Haig's that I want to read. I am saving it for the three weeks where I am travelling around Italy with my girlfriend at the end of April. One reoccurring theme with these book covers that I have noticed is that they all have one bright, dominant colour. For example, "The Possession of Mr Cave" is primarily purple, "The Humans" is primarily cyan & "The Last Family in England" is primarily bright yellow. This means that when they are all displayed together on a bookshelf, they stand together strong and appear extremely vibrant, catching the viewers eye. It is important for a book to stand out on a bookshelf, as it entices people to pick it up and want to read the blurb.
Surrealism has once again reoccured in this design, where the handle of a lead is looped around the silhouette of four individuals. Having a reoccurring theme of colour palette and design style helps the books feel like stronger as a collective.
Another book of Matt Haig's which, yet again, I have not read is "The Dead Fathers Club". This is up there with one of my favourite book cover designs which Adlington has created due to the manipulation of typography. The concept of having one line of the title over the image of the bottle, and one line behind and therefore distorted, creates a very unique and interesting design. The pointillism technique of shading which I noticed in "The Possession of Mr Cave" book cover has occurred here in the shading of the bottle, as well as in the title text ever so slightly. I also noticed another technique of bright, bold colours being used in the background in the other book covers, and this pattern has most definitely been used again with the use of bright pink.
It is very important that in order to create a successful design, it is obvious that the text has been planned along with the other design elements, and not something which is placed randomly on the design after. Having a silhouette of a child sitting on the text of the title is a great way of connecting these two design elements.
A book cover which Adlington has designed, which is not written by Matt Haig, which inspires me is "Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic - Simon Armitage". This cover inspires me significantly due to the unique collage technique. Collaging is one of my favourite techniques within graphic design, and something which I find myself gravitating towards as a designer, so I am not surprised that this book cover is one of my favourites of Adlington's work.
It is extremely important for the design of the front cover to match the design of the back, and this is the first example of Adlington's work where we can see he has achieved this perfectly. The approach of having the collage on the front cover arranged, neat & precise, compared to the back cover which is appears purposefully messy and rushed, in turn creating an interesting contrast, allowing the professionalism and artistic value of the overall book cover to increase significantly.
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