For this particular trilogy I took into account who the intended audience for these books were: young adults in grade school. So I developed a very clean, straight forward style reminiscent of textbook illustrations. After nailing down the style, the next task to tackle was the concept. The concept developed for the covers was a pattern with some sort of deviation that acted as the delivering punchline. When developing these the imagery for the covers I had focused on staying away from visual symbols heavily associated with the lore of the trilogy such as the Mockingjay, bows, and arrows. So instead I decided to play with the idea of conformity an oppressive regime usually forces upon its people.
For The Hungers Games, I had set a grid of Panem youth with one female running away from the direction the rest of the youth is facing. This is to represent the beginning of revolution to follow in the next two books with a small rebellious act by the female protagonist.
Catching Fire was more difficult to tackle because it is the segue book. With this cover I had twelve arena participants running in a circle with a trident casting a shadow. This setup is supposed to resemble a clock referencing the setup of the arena and also a reference to how all the participants thought they escaped the games but ended up getting dragged back into one more. I chose the trident to be the center of attention in this cover to draw attention to a character that played a very important role this book.
With Mockingjay, I decided to return to the grid setup I had with the first book. With the last book I immediately knew what I wanted to do. The grid I have setup for the last book consists of dismembered body parts, with a heart in middle of each group except for one which is replaced with a yellow care package. This yellow care package is important because in the last book bombs disguised as care packages were dropped on children. Also I picked the set of limbs with a blonde because the main protagonist’s younger sister is a blonde but is also a field medic and dies during these bombings. I didn’t want to give too much away though so I led suspicion away by making all the sets of limbs female.
