Exercise Making a mock-up

Initially I thought about taking a self help book. I tried some sketches around the idea of your own mind stopping you from achieving or doing certain things. I had some self doubts on the strength of the meanings after a poor result on the earlier visual metaphor exercise. 

Based on my doubts and really enjoying painting birds I opted for a bird book cover. I had previously been drawing and painting some birds and thought I would put the pictures to use. 

I tried to re-create it as close as I could but to fit my illustrations, because my illustrations were in a slightly different format I had to look at other options of the layout and I felt the red tones really complemented the colours of the birds. I am a long way off from the illustrations in a field guide but had seen some less scientific illustrations used on Collins Bird Guide.  

In addition to the above I decided to mock up one of my sketches and use a book by Dale Carnegie - How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. 

I tried to replicate it as close as I could but the cover had no illustration so I had to re-work the text size and arrangement a little. The typeface is very likely correct but a different variation of it, Century Schoolbook. 

This is how the converted sketched turned out. After adding it to the design I realized the colours didn't work, I tested the base colour of the book and it instantly looked better. The grey in the traffic lights didn't match well either, white felt most suitable. 

The whole brain traffic lights concept was about your mind stopping you from moving forwards, in the same way a traffic light stops a car from moving forwards, even though you can drive through a red light you choose not to, the principals in the book are similar. You could move forwards and start living but choose not to. I showed the idea to my wife and she thought showing green lights would be more positive, that the lights have changed and you can 'start living' now the lights are green. This felt like a good suggestions and for a change I took the advice.