Call Me By Your Name Book Cover

For the Course Graphic Design & Typography 

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For the course Graphic Design & Typography, we were asked to redesign a book cover to learn about visual impact. I chose to redesign this cover because both the initial cover and the post-movie redesign fail to meet audience expectations. The first cover features the image of a man, has an unclear purpose and could create dissonance with readers who viewed the movie first. The second cover is the movie’s poster, however, this fails to establish the book’s importance.

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My redesigned cover design features four swimming trunks, the book title, and the author’s name. The four swimming trunks are a direct reference from the book, as they are described by Elio, the first-person narrator, as having particular meaning when worn by Oliver, his love interest, very early in the novel.  

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However, I wanted the bathing suits to have a hand drawn quality to them. As a reader, you read through Elio’s perspective, and his perspective is wildly angsty and obsessive. The hand drawn nature portrays something personable, as if he had drawn them himself. For the duration of the project, I was very drawn to the idea of notebook doodles one often makes when you have a crush. Furthermore, it establishes the gender of the characters as well as the time period and setting of the novel. 

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The cover has been left white to allow the colors of the bathing suits to stand out and contribute to the novel’s theme of silence. I believe it would be interesting to leave the backside of the book white. Throughout the novel, Elio and Oliver fail to communicate an idea directly, often talking around or avoiding it altogether. So, throughout the novel, silence says more than words. In fact, they never say, “I love you” to each other. Yet, as a reader, you feel satisfied as if they had.

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Lastly, I’ve used the font Hoefler Text for the title and author name. It is the only element that is extremely similar to the original cover design. I wanted a serif font because the novel has an old elegance to it - history, ancient statues, classical music, and Italian villas. Hoefler Text has those elements of elegance, while still reading personable and young, especially in the lowercase.