The second best-selling author of all time — and one of my favorite authors — Agatha Christie, is known as the Queen of Crime for her unparalleled series of mystery novels, short stories, and plays. In tribute I redesigned the covers of three of her most famous murder mysteries: And Then There Were None, Death on the Nile, and Sleeping Murder. I titled the series “The Essential Agatha Christie,” as I believe these are three must-reads for any mystery lover like me.
I designed the front and back covers as well as the first few pages of the front matter for each book, including the half title, full title, copyright, and first page of the first chapter. In addition, I animated the three covers so that the respective illustrations move to reveal the final still-image of the covers. My goal was to integrate the illustration around and into the typography so that they became one full connected scene.
Despite Christie publishing books for three-quarters of the twentieth century, most of her works are associated with or take place during the 1930’s, so in spirit, I used an Art Deco-inspired typeface, Bodega Sans, for the titles. I used a more traditional, contemporary serif, ATF Garamond, for Christie’s name on the covers and the body text. The textures layered in the background of the book jackets are meant to emulate aged pages of old paperbacks, and since this is a series of murder mysteries, the color of the spine and illustrations is, of course, blood red. The books are 5.25 inches wide (folded) by 8 inches tall in the traditional size of mystery paperbacks.
