For this assignment a section of David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day inspired the creation of a book cover. Metaphor played a very important part in this assignment because we made a cover that metaphorically represented the lesson in the story.
The story I was assigned was about the author’s distaste for new, haute cuisine and its tiny, nutrition-less servings. In the story he humorously describes how satisfying a reliable street hot dog is over the fancy food he declined.
While making this cover, there was a lot of brainstorming and iterating of the same idea. It took me the longest to solidify the metaphor that I wanted to convey. This project was especially meaningful because it encouraged me to put plenty of thought into the content of the designs I create.
Finally, I decided that the metaphor was meant to convey the idea that, although appealing, extra flourishes can disguise the essential nature of many things around us. In Sedaris’ story, the presentation of the food distracted from it’s nutritional purpose. With my cover, I used a pocket knife with many extra extensions to show the same idea. This idea worked especially well because not only is the open knife visually appealing, but the wear and tear on the most basic blade in the knife emphasizes the metaphor.
