I’ve been working on this for a few days now. I think I’m finished. And I think I’m happy with it.

I tried to incorporate a lot of miscellaneous HP symbols - the Sorting Hat, the Elder Wand, a Nimbus 2000, a time turner, the Dark Mark, a snitch, etc., etc. - but couldn’t make it work. Every draft I tried just looked very cluttered. So I finally just decided to forget that route and go for a simplistic approach. Which was frustrating to me because I spent a lot of time with the pen tool making all of those symbols. Ugh. Ah well, maybe I’ll use them in something else.

As for the text, I just played around with the placement until I figured out a layout that I liked. I tried to make it visually pleasing, while also enlarging the words which I wanted to really emphasize.

I was also originally planning to incorporate the color schemes from all the Hogwarts houses, not just Gryffindor. But Gryffindor is just so regal. Also, it looked bad every way I tried to do it.

I guess that’s about all I have to say about it. For now, I think I’m satisfied enough with it to leave it alone. But I also have a tendency to see things I want to change a while after I’ve “finished” them.

As for why I chose this quote - it’s one of my favorite quotes ever. It’s also one of my favorite ideas to think about.

I guess this took me about 2.5 days to finish, what with the constant messing around with layout and what is/isn’t included. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with how it turned out.

10/15/11 edit: I removed the book from the design and increased the size of the letters. The longer I looked at it, the less I liked the book. I think it’s much stronger with my new changes.