Book cover for 'The Need for Roots' by Simone Weil

As a course project for 'Color Applied to Graphic Design' by Leire y Eduardo, I designed a book cover for Simone Weil's influental book 'The Need for Roots'.

I used the following supplies for this project:
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Unsplash for stock imagery
Wikimedia Commons for author photos

'The Need for Roots' is a politicological study of what causes uprootedness in people and what can be done for them to feel rooted, based on the situation of the French population during the Second World War. The book is steeped in a deeply spiritual view of human nature, describing human rights rather as essential needs of or obligations towards the human being.

I started my explorations with gathering imagery and visual references. Despite being a little on the nose, it felt justifiable to use literal tree roots, as Weil's work often invokes the symbolism of trees. I also found a wonderful painting of Weil by Philippe Jamin, and a couple photographs of her that could work for a cover depicting the author.

Based on these visual references, I started creating concepts for the cover. I used Photoshop for the image-based covers and Illustrator for the vector-based ones.

I ended up with four concepts that seemed promising to me. The first one uses the Jamin painting, while reserving the upper third for the type, set in Neue Kabel Light and Orpheus Pro. This gives the cover a classic non-fiction look.
My second proposal uses triangles intended to resemble trees, while the negative space of downward-pointing triangles could signify rootedness. I used Field Gothic No.15 (Bold XXX Condensed) paired with New Spirit Condensed for a more contemporary look that simultaneously refers to the typefaces used in the first half of the twentieth century.
The third proposal uses a worms-eye shot of tree tops, again leaning into the tree metaphor, with large type, set in Brother 1816, that grabs most of the attention.
For the final proposal, I vectorized a tree root from a photo and put it against a contrasting solid colored background. I picked Benton Modern for the type, which I set in the top left corner to balance out the composition.

After some consideration, I decided to continue with the final proposal, which, to me, best fits the serious, academic character of the book, while incorporating the symbolism of the tree root in a subtle way.

When picking colors, it was clear from the beginning that I did not want to use any form of realist color. My first instinct was to use the colors of the French flag, because Weil was primarily writing about the state of France during the Second World War. I used a saturaded red and blue for the figure and ground and white for the type. This resulted in a very striking, high-contrast composition. I tried reducing the saturation and lightness of the blue and shifting the hue of the red to achieve a more pleasing result, but failed to find a combination of red and blue that worked well enough for this composition.

Next, I tried a palette of dark, desaturated blues, which result in a monochrome, almost grey look, conveying a feeling of seriousness fitting to the book. I felt, however, that this palette did not properly reflect the urgency that is felt when reading the book. I then tried the same approach with red, using a bright red and a darker, less saturated red. I also explored swapping out the red for a pink, which provides a striking contrast, and, especially when used as the ground, puts more emphasis on the red form of the tree root.

From my color explorations, I picked the three most viable options to further perfect; the two monochrome red options and the red-on-pink one. These variations strike the best balance between the serious content of the book and the feeling of urgency it invokes.

Before deciding on the final cover, there were some final considerations to be made. Red is often associated with marxism/communism in political discourse. While Simone Weil was definitely a left-wing thinker, she had strong reservations about marxism on the basis of her own religious beliefs. Therefore, red-on-red might be less suitable for this book.

In the red-on-pink cover, the red of the tree root can have the additional connotation of blood, which in this case ties into Weil's discussion of nationalism as well as the wartime setting of the book. The softer pink of the background makes the cover just a little less aggressive than the monochrome options, which is fitting. The background color also fits well with Weil's thoroughly spiritual view on humanity, pink symbolizing affection and compassion. Based on these considerations, I chose this option as the final cover.