OUGD403 - Study Task 3

Today we was given the task: 'Using your developing understanding of colour theory and typographic design/usage produce a graphic reinterpretation of your given Agatha Christie novel as part of the Guardians celebration of what would have been the authors 125th birthday.'

My novel given to me was Sparkling Cyanide. The first thing I decided to do was look into Agatha Christie and a brief summary of sparkling cyanide. Sparkling cyanide is a expansion of a Hercule Poirot short story called yellow iris, its the forth and final series of books containing Colonel race,  a fictional character created by agatha christie. It is a crime novel about a murder. 

(Word Definitions)

cyanide

ˈsʌɪənʌɪd/

noun

CHEMISTRY

1. a salt or ester of hydrocyanic acid, containing the anion CN⁻ or the group —CN. The salts are generally extremely toxic.

   • sodium or potassium cyanide used as a poison or in the extraction of gold and silver.

     
     

     
     

sparkling

ˈspɑːk(ə)lɪŋ,ˈspɑːklɪŋ/

adjective

1. 1. 

   shining brightly with flashes of light.

   "her sparkling blue eyes"
2. 2. 

   (of a drink) effervescent; fizzy.

   "sparkling wine"

Born	Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller 15 September 1890 Torquay, Devon, England
Died	12 January 1976 (aged 85) Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England
Resting place	Church of St Mary, Cholsey, Oxfordshire, England
Pen name	Mary Westmacott Agatha Christie
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet
Genre	Murder mystery, thriller, crime fiction, detective, romance

'Six months later, her husband George receives anonymous letters saying that Rosemary was murdered' I took this from (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkling_Cyanide) my reason for posting it is i had a quick idea from this maybe use the letters to hold the typefaces on my front cover. 

The plot of this novel is an expansion of a Hercule Poirot short story entitled "Yellow Iris," 

This was played on bbc Radio, as a drama also. I really like this style of cover the subtle icons around the edge give a quick idea of what the book will be about without taking to much away from the author and the title. 

Author: Agatha Christie

Country: United States 

Genre: Crime Novel 

Publication Date: February 

This is the first ever publicised Edition of Sparkling cyanide and in america is called remembered death, its illustrated by Hy Rubin. This is a us version of the book and was publicised in February 1945. The illustrations for this are not brilliant and defiantly outdated. 

This is there current English Edition being sold and was published in 2002. The title although i think is not very legible is in fact agatha Christie's signature.

Colonel Race Book Series by HarperCollins Publishers

1. 
   

A review into Sparkling cyanide:

('In 1939, Agatha Christie published a short story featuring Hercule Poirot, entitled "Yellow Iris." A few years later, she expanded the story into this excellent novel, changing the detective to Colonel Race. Having read the story before the novel, I immediately recognized the similarity of the setup (right down to the name Iris). I assumed, therefore, that I knew how the murder was done, and in fact that aspect remains the same. However, if you think that reading the story will make it pointless to read the novel, think again! The murderer is someone completely different, and I was wrong in my suspicions and shocked at the ending. I know it's a 5-star Agatha when she reveals the murderer and I smack myself on the forehead and yell, "Holy crap!" out loud. Sparkling Cyanide is such a novel. I was blindsided by the ending, immediately kicked myself for not seeing it, and went back to re-read earlier passages that contained clues--or significant omissions, for there is a touch of Roger Ackroyd-style omission here. 

Sparkling Cyanide is one of my favorite Christie titles, by the way: it suggests the glamour of the elegant 1930s nightclub where the murder takes place, and certainly the idea of cyanide in the Champagne is a dramatic and memorable one. I also have to give Dame Agatha credit for introducing me to the verb "cyanosed" (i.e., killed via cyanide), which I now want to work into a conversation sometime. I think it might supersede "defenestrate" as my new favorite violent verb. ')

From this review I took a few helpful points but one that stuck out was 'by the way: it suggests the glamour of the elegant 1930s nightclub' I thought I could research into this era and scene. 

Here is a video I watched from this era (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR2jLotxoQA).

The first thing I noticed is the clothing they wear is very formal, there is also many tables more like a ballroom rather than a nightclub of our era. 

(Looking into the era it was published 1945)




For this I decided to take inspiration from The original hercule period short story series that this book originated from but with a more contemporary twist on it 

These where my posters for the day session however i was not happy with the amount of depth behind them so I decided to redesign them. 

Firstly i looked at Anna kovecese a Illustrator who created a series of crime novel cover. I sketched up a few design for a similar idea taking inspirations for the geometric shapes used however i decided against this approach due to the amount of time I had considering this was a quick study task and i had more time consuming projects to get on with. 

So I moved onto looking at cyanid poisons and the labelling. I began with this image and then played with the theorhold then turned it into a vetor and got rid of the back ground the creat a siluet of the bottle. I played around with this on diffrent back grounds and font however could not get it to fit the bill. So i decided to look into the chemical compound of cyanide. 

So I took the compound and recreated it on illustrator I used yellow for the sign and font to suggest warning and neutral background to create a easy to read contrast, the dark grey also implies mystery and death. 

I then submitted this to the guardian Drawing the detectives competition.