Objective

Create a pair of covers for a TU Delft pair of university theory and exercises books in the subject of signal processing. Covers should work for print and ebook.

Ideation

Signal processing is all about parametrising timebased signals into frequency based models to apply filtering techniques. Ideally signals can be perfectly decomposed into a set of smooth harmonic functions of various frequencies. Real-life signals, however, are messy, noisy. The idea was to bring together both worlds in one art piece and have the intersect occur on the spine (or front and back cover edge in case of the ebook).

The two main colours for the Theory resp the Exercise book, were given as they are part of the corporate identity. The challenge was to find a complementary palette to allow for the artwork, apart from the main color, to be exactly the same.

Furthermore I used the following design principles and applied them as follows in this design:

• Timeless: simplicity
• Strong, but not aggressive: clear lines
• Clean, but not sterile: limited palette, organic noise, subtle dropshadows
• Layered interpretation: am I looking at waveforms, or at a landscape?

Visual Breakdown

The design can be broken down into 6 characteristic elements.