Book concept for Frank Herbert’s DUNE

One of the most distinctive things about the world of Dune is the ancient and futuristic melding together. I wanted to create a book cover based on this contrast.

To get this across, I combined ornate/ancient elements with simplistic/futuristic ones, and took inspiration from the way that religious tomes look. The gold foil embossing was a good fit visually with the sand, and made the simple shapes more interesting.

After scrapping many concepts, I settled on three designs.