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Design
The Martian

The Martian

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Idea and concept

The background to this project was to mark the novel's 10th anniversary (since its publication under its own publisher in 2011) by launching a new edition with a redesigned cover and interior. This anniversary edition was to include a hardcover dust jacket in a hardcover spread. The summary on the back of the book would be the same as the original. Because it would be a dust jacket, there would also be information about the author and reviews on the flaps of the dust jacket. The matter, including the colophon, was to be redesigned and re-covered with new typography. The type of paper for the dust jacket, material and front cover would also be defined.

The original cover for the 2014 edition of The Martian. Designed by Eric White.
The original cover for the 2014 edition of The Martian. Designed by Eric White.

Colors

The color scheme for this project was a bit out of the ordinary for the genre. I took inspiration from other redesigns of the same cover, and almost all of them used saturated shades of orange, which I also did in my first draft. During development, I discarded these and decided to use dark shades of green (which can be associated with the organic element of the novel) and a darker variant of orange, as well as a desaturated red to replace white on the entire cover. The orange color is also used on the cover and as a paper color on the front cover.

Typography

Typography was an important part of this project, especially when it came to the body text of the material. In the process work, a large exploration of fonts was carried out, where I took 16 different font families as a starting point and compared them based on criteria such as: Readability, a balanced gray effect on the text surface, and support for real chapters and minuscule numbers. After many trials, I finally decided that the Sabon typeface - designed by Jan Tschichold - was a clear winner.

Frutiger is used as a support font for Sabon, as they fit perfectly together. This font is also used as body text in some parts of the material, where it has a semantic connection with the content of the text.

Enlarged image