Tasked with an Alice in Wonderland cover redesign for Intro to Illustration, I took a different approach. I felt that the imagery and icons associated with Alice in Wonderland had become overused and cliche. There were a thousand and one renditions of that. Instead I turned to the meaning behind the book, taking inspiration from Carroll's motif of madness and meaning. Throughout the book, the main conflict is the clash between what logical and orderly Alice understands the world to be and the absurdity of Wonderland. As time passes, she begins to loss her sense of self as the madness of Wonderland overwhelms her. I wanted to create a cover to convey this central conflict in an abstract and bizarre way.
For the end pages, I was deeply inspired by the Rorschach ink blot tests and brought that easily recognized symbol associated with mental health and subconsciousness into my design.
Below are two alternative covers and an alternative end page to the first cover (above).
Alternative endpage.