Title: Watership Down
Author: Richard Adams
First published: 1972

A classic adventure novel that follows the anthropomorphised rabbits of the Sandleford burrow who flee the destruction of their home and they seek a safe haven where they can start a new life.

I’m not sure you can design a cover for Watership Down without including rabbits in some capacity, so I decided to put an illustration of one front-and-centre of this version (for which I chose to reimagine the 50th Anniversary Edition, in order to give myself the added challenge of including space for an appropriate sticker).

The book is so rich and deep in the fictional culture of the rabbits—with their own deity, proverbs, secret police and even their own mythology—that I didn’t want the cover to try and do too much at once. Instead I focused on the characters of Fiver (a runt rabbit who is also a seer), Hazel (who leads the rabbits on their dangerous journey) and El-ahrairah (the rabbit of folk legend within the story itself). All three are represented by the portrait on the cover.

For typography I wanted something with plenty of personality that would complement the design without being too ostentatious. And I included areas for either a gold foil block or metallic gold ink.

This is cover is a reimagining and not commercially available, any fonts or images used have been included as part of a personal project only.