OUGD503 - Penguin - initial research

I have found interest in the Penguin Books design awards. This tasks participants in creating a design for a book in one of three categories. These are: adult non-fiction, adult fiction and children. The book titles include, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend.

I looked at a synopsis of each book online to get an understanding of which I would like to work with for this brief. Because In Cold Blood is a non-fiction novel, I feel there will be more information on the murders outside the books content. This will help my research with my busy schedule (seen on my ppp blog) as I would have to read both of the other books to get a good understanding of what to create on the cover.

I decided to do some initial research on In Cold Blood. The synopsis I found can be seen below:

'In Cold Blood tells the true story of the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959. The book is written as if it were a novel, complete with dialog, and is what Truman Capote referred to as "New Journalism"'

These are some previous book covers for this novel:

I started to look more in depth at the Penguin design awards as a competition. I wanted to pick up any consistent themes seen in the work of previous winners.