Unique Ideas

I thought Henry's design for Violence would be a great cover to preface the following discussion.

As book cover designers we are called to—obviously—convey the content of the book while displaying information that will be used to advertise the book itself, at least this is what book jackets were meant for in the first place, advertisement and protection. We are also—hopefully—called to display this information in some unique fashion. I believe that it is important to ask ourselves, no matter what practice of design we are in, what that unique quality is that we are bringing to our design, to each individual project. Is our idea unique, Our execution, our interpretation of an idea? Does each individual project we work on merit some unique quality? I certainly hope it would.

Back to Henry's cover for Violence. Henry takes this idea of violence and portrays it in an abstract, but still obvious, manner. Henry is solving his problem—to convey violence—in a unique way that one does not see every day. We aren't seeing people getting beaten with bats, shot with guns or screaming, we are shown the after affect of an act of violence. Unique!

So, what makes something unique? Is it one thing that we can pin down? Is it something we simply discover in the process?