Book covers for three books by Albert Camus — The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall. Not only each book cover had to communicate its story, themes, and ideas, but all three book covers also had to work as a cohesive visual system.
Albert Camus is an Algeria-born French Absurdist philosopher who is known for his books — The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall — to name a few. The Stranger is a story of and narrated by an indifferent French Algerian named Meursault. He attends his mother’s funeral, and a few days later he kills an Arab man in French Algiers, who was involved in a conflict with a friend. His reasoning was “because of the sun”. He was tried and sentenced to death. The Plague is a story of how people of Oran discovers the plague outbreak, and eventually come together to fight the disease. The Fall is a story of the judge-penitent named Jean-Baptiste Clamence telling the story of his fall from a top judge in France because he didn’t help a woman when she jumped off the bridge over Seine river.
For The Stranger, Meursault killed the Arab “because of the sun”. So I included the imagery of a sheet of paper burnt by a ray of sunlight created using a magnifying glass. I was also inspired by the phrase "to be burnt out" as I believe it demonstrates Meursault’s state perfectly. The quote “…For the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world...” was the reasoning for including galaxy in the background. For The Plague, not only the disease itself was the source of inspiration (how bacteria grow on a petri dish in such way; and vomiting blood is one of the main symptoms of the disease), but also the state of confinement due to the quarantine, and how the people of Oran unite to fight the plague. And The Fall, the incident where the woman jumps off the bridge was the main inspiration, as Jean-Baptiste Clamence's perfect reputation was ruined by that incident, like a drop of black ink ruining a cup of clean water.
