Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a seminal literary work by Science Fiction author Phillip K Dick. In this novel, PKD explores both the vast, barren landscape of Earth as a future dystopian wasteland, as well as the complexities of consciousness and what it means to be human. Androids follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter whose job is to seek and neutralize escaped androids fleeing to earth from Martian colonies established after humans rendered Earth largely uninhabitable. 

With advances in robotics and AI technologies allowing for nearly indistinguishably human androids, hunting them has become a much more complicated task. Humans have become so accurately replicable Deckard is left wondering about his own humanity and questioning what it really means to be human.

Problem

Phillip K Dick is a personal favorite in the Sci-Fi genre, he’s produced countless archetypal novels and short stories that have been adapted into classic films like Blade Runner and Total Recall. He began his career on the tail end of the pulp magazine era and many of his book covers harken back to that style. Despite the continued success of PKD adaptations, even more recent releases like Blade Runner 2, I’ve struggled to find any prints of the book that appear to have been designed in the last 50 years. The problem I aim to solve is to bring the PKD aesthetic into the 21st century while attempting to retain some of the original pulp influence.

Ideation

Researching for this project I began to notice that many of the previous cover designs are very literal interpretations of the title, a lot of pictures of sheep plugged into outlets or emitting electricity. I wanted to delve a little deeper into the higher concepts of the book but inevitably, sheep and plugs seeped into some of my sketches as well. As with many works surrounding the topic of AI, “Androids” makes the nature of consciousness a central concept, weaving in questions about humanity, empathy and intelligence. It is these concepts that I find much more central to the overall mood of the story.

Initial Trajectory

Working through some of the more cliche ideas featuring robot heads and battery operated sheep I began experimenting with a more stripped down abstract concept using concentric circles to suggest the shape of questionably artificial eyes. Against the background of space

Refinement

Final Results