Studio tas 3 - Drawing the Detectives

Drawing the Detectives

Using our developing understanding of colour theory and typographic design/usage, we are tasked to produce a graphic representation of our given Agatha Christie novel as part of the Guardians celebration of what would have been the authors 125th birthday.

GIven Novel

Cat Among the Pigeons

Plot Summery

‘Hope nobody here had nothing to hide,’ said Miss Springer, the new Game Mistress at Meadowbank to her colleagues at the beginning of the summer term. Days later the school matron and the Deputy Head found her dead from a single bullet at the girls’ school Sports Pavilion.

Unpopular she might have seemed among the staff and the pupils, her murder was a shock. Then the second murder occurred at the same premises. Clearly, there was something in the new building the murderer had been looking for.

Julia Upjohn, one of the pupils , worked out what it was. Nonetheless, instead of going to the police she went to Hercule Poirot for help; his being a friend of her mother’s friend. Unbeknown to Julia, Mrs. Upjohn happened to recognise a killer when she took her daughter at the start of the term.

In the meantime, a pupil vanished hours before the second killing. The niece of Emir Ibrahim – a ruler in a small rich country in the Middle East- was picked up by a chauffeur-driven limousine at school for a weekend with her uncle but never returned.

Two murders and a kidnap in a term were more than enough for parents. With its future hanging on a thread Poirot raced with time to realise who was the cat among the pigeons.  Yet, was he quick enough to prevent another murder?

Meaning of the Phrase 'Cat Among the Pigeons'

to say or do something that ​causes ​trouble or makes a lot of ​people very ​angry

Research Into Existing Book Covers

 

Past Book Covers

Responses

Book cover for cat among the pigeons playing on the when Johnson and Chadwick discover the body near the start of the book whilst also playing on the books title cat among pigeons. After asking many people one what colour comes to mind for a cat among the pigeons a vast majority said a light blue while some said a dark green. I decided to go down the blue route and create this simplistic book title. Eventually, after many experimentations I decided on which ones where the best:

I preferred the left-hand image, whilst its not much different, the corners really make the cover look better in my opinion. With the final design chosen all that was left to do was upload it up onto the Guardian's webpage along with everyone else's.