Book Jacket Redesign
Sunrise on the Reaping & The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Overview
This project reimagines the book jackets for Sunrise on the Reaping and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, prequels in The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. The goal was to create a modern visual approach that reflects the more political tone of the prequels while maintaining a connection to the series’ iconic identity. The redesign emphasizes symbolism, contrast, and bold composition to create covers that feel cinematic and emotionally charged.
Research & Discovery
Research focused on understanding both the existing Hunger Games visual language and the evolving tone of the prequels. Insights showed an opportunity to shift toward a more mature, politically driven aesthetic while still appealing to longtime fans and new young adult readers. The direction prioritizes strong visual storytelling and collectibility, resulting in designs that feel contemporary, elevated, and accessible.
Original Covers
The Hunger games
Inspiration & Ideation
Mood Board
This mood board combines book covers, film scenes, and textures that shaped the visual direction. The covers highlight strong composition and minimal, symbolic storytelling, while film stills introduce atmosphere and contrast between beauty and tension.
Organic textures like grass, flowers, feathers, and reptile skin are paired with worn, printed surfaces to explore the balance between softness and intensity, helping define a clear and cohesive visual language.
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Sketches
Initial sketches explored symbolic concepts and compositional structures as a way to translate narrative into visual form. The focus was on simplifying imagery while maintaining strong visual impact, reducing each idea to its most essential elements. Multiple approaches tested how distinct symbols could work together within a cohesive system, balancing clarity, consistency, and flexibility across different compositions.
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Digital Drafts
Round One
Early digital drafts explored strong symbolic imagery and bold typography, but the full jacket felt disconnected. The front, spine, and back were treated more separately, which made the designs feel less cohesive. Typography often competed with the imagery, making hierarchy and readability less clear.
Round 02
In the second round, the focus shifted to designing the jacket as one continuous surface. Imagery extended across the spine, and forms were simplified to improve flow. Typography was placed more intentionally, creating clearer hierarchy and balance. These changes brought everything together into a more cohesive, immersive wraparound design, though it still needed refinement, particularly in strengthening the imagery and overall visual impact.
Final Design
The final designs turn each story into bold, symbolic visuals across the full book jacket. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes uses intertwined snakes and a bird to show power and transformation, while Sunrise on the Reaping uses a simplified bird and strong color to suggest fragility and inevitability.
The color palette is limited and high contrast to match each tone and keep the designs consistent. Sunrise on the Reaping uses red orange and gold, while Ballad uses black, olive, and soft pink. Typography is bold and easy to read, with Druk for strong, cinematic titles and Source Sans Pro for clear supporting text.
The biggest shift was treating the jacket as one continuous design. Imagery flows across the front, spine, and back, and type is placed more intentionally. This creates a clear hierarchy and a more cohesive, immersive result.
Reflection
This project focused on turning complex stories into clear visual symbols, strengthening my ability to communicate mood and theme with minimal elements. Designing the full jacket improved my understanding of cohesion by treating the spine and back as part of one continuous design.
Balancing contrast between light and dark, warmth and tension, and simplicity and meaning helped elevate the work while keeping each cover distinct. Moving forward, I would love to expand this project by redesigning the remaining three covers for The Hunger Games and developing it into a more complete, fully realized series.
