From doing my research so far I have come up with some ideas:

I needed something inspired by Steampunk and the Victorian era that would link with all 3 of the books. These are the links I came up with:

Ann Veronica – She keeps a jar with a dissected frog inside on top of her wardrobe in her bedroom… Although this is not an important piece of the story it is still a detail that will help link this title to the other 2, it is the science connection. This then gave birth to the other 2 ideas for the other 2 book covers…

The Time Machine – This story is about a man who sits at a table having a meal among friends and he tells them that he has found a way to travel forward in time – no one believes him but with a 3 hour time difference inbetween his journey there and back he travels into the future. He meets a girl (alien girl) called Weena and when he finally gets back to present day to show his findings to the dinner table of friends, he finds that Weena affectionately planted 2 white flowers in his jacket pocket… At the end of the story he presents these to the people around the dinner table to prove that he did travel forwards in time.

The flowers in the story are important; they represent love, affection and care between the 2 characters. The flowers also act as a bridge between the present and the future.. without these flowers there would be no proof of his time travelling journey. The flowers show delicacy and a weakness – maybe that nothing is ever guaranteed and that the future is never ever certain, that people are in fact subject to mother nature.

Tono-Bungay – This story is about a potion that was formed as a “cure all” miraculous medicine… in fact it was nothing more than a nice tasting liquid. This is the most creative novel HG Wells wrote. The potion was called Tono-Bungay and In the story it was so cleverly advertised which meant that it was a huge financial success for the character who helped create it.

I would like to create this cover (or create some ideas) around the idea of (the book) being advertised to the reader just like in the story how the medicine is successfully advertised.. however my first idea for now is to do a similar cover to the other 2 titles..

So… What ideas have I come up with so far?

My first ideas from picking out these important key points from the story are to create a set (series) of books based around potion/medicine bottles and bell jars…

• The dissected frog would be in a jar
• The white flowers would be in a bell jar (similar to one that appeared in Beauty and the Beast)
• Tono-Bungay would be in a medicine bottle

Botany and embalming were popular subjects in the Victorian era and these design ideas would reflect that. The three titles would look very similar in appearance to each other and would work as a series.

I also googled ideas around this subject and came up with a Dutch artist called Frederik Ruysch who was known as the “artist of death” he specialised in science, botany and embalming.. He is known for developing techniques for preserving anatomical specimens, which he used to create dioramas or scenes incorporating human parts. I like the details in his drawings and the fact they are hand drawn in black and white.

These are images of some of his work.

I also then had a think about how I could link some Steampunk into these ideas… I thought about running pipes into the jars with gas and then the smoke coming out of the top. The title of the books could possibly come out of the smoke. I would include cogs also.

I sketched some ideas in my sketchbook for this:

I decided to use a different colour for each one: Red for Tono-Bungay; I felt red symbolised blood and very much being alive… this potion was a miraculous “cure all” for all ailments and illness. I decided on green for Ann Veronica because it symbolises the colour of the frog in the jar and I went for Blue for The Time Machine because of the delicacy of the flowers/ nature. Blue represents to me a calmness and the flowers represent love, care and kindness. They would all create a repetition in design and become a series.

I shall mess around some more with these ideas and see what happens next!