Critique: Book Covers

Now that we have another couple of days for book covers, I'm excited to continue to execute ideas. I still feel like I'm falling short, but I'm definitely going in a better direction than before. I've asked my southern politics professor to help me decipher the text, so hopefully I'll have an even better understanding of it by the weekend.

I went with the more intellectual side of the story since it's talking about how literacy was held in such high esteem in the south and the development of southern thought/ideas. It also talked about how they were trying to hold on to a "dissolving past" so I tried to play with that idea as well with the grungy American flag in the geek-chic glasses (playing on that past/future idea). The argyle one just plays on that pattern as a symbol of academia like tweed. The dictionary one is obvious (the description talked a lot about "men of letters" so I thought a dictionary entry would be a good way to try and represent that). The last one is one I've been working on as of late. I tried to literally make a man of letters like a typographic illustration. I couldn't get it to work out right though so I just went with the silhouette (which needs to be cleaned up). I'm trying to figure out what to do with the background. Possibly letter stamps/blocks or something or some kind of iconography pattern or something. Now that I have more time I think I can make that one look really polished.