Book Covers
Book covers created for Catapult, Counerpoint, Soft Skull Press and Deep Vellum Publishing. Book covers are an ongoing passion that I freelance in, and I love the iterative process and pushing my thinking into multiple concepts and visions.Perpetual Law
When I read the description ”a novella that puzzles from the first page with its liminal, Lynchian atmosphere.” I knew I’d be hooked. This novella, by Mario Bellatin Latin America’s literary prankster follows an unnamed woman known as “our woman” an unnamed country by the sea, as she searches to reach the House. There, she will be able to listen to her childhood voice
The rainy seaside really set the mood for this, as well as the liminal Lynchian atmosphere. in reading it there was a lot I highlighted, and I took a lot of inspiration from movie posters, the final approved cover I felt was a direct interpretation of Vertigo, twisting and turning and searching and spiraling towards her destination. At some point reading the book I came across a passage while Our Woman was in search of the house that contained every voice where I read it described as “an Infiniti of voices” after underlining it multiple times and dreaming about that phrase I interpreted as “a sea of voices” which turned out to have never been mentioned, but it drove my thoughts on another direction, of several different mouths talking close and at a distance, a visual sea of voices. After thinking for sometime I wondered why I liked it so much and it’s because it reminded me of the Being John Malcovich poster.
I also thought it was a great opportunity to use the typeface I designed “Sesquipedalian” because of its sharp design, jagged unfinished nature, overlapping each other creating a crashing claustraphobic experience
At this point I had been pretty dead set on favorite concepts but got worried because for stock photography I used myself and felt weird about sending the publisher too many pictures of my mouth, and there was more to be inspired by in the book. “The dugout of underground Departures” was a train station that was always flooded which I made out of watercolor, the approaching water, and the title dissapearing into water, since a part of me has always wanted to do a cover that looks like penmanship drills
PRACTICE OF THE WILD
This book had such a beautiful lyrical quality to it that a lot of the covers were inspired by quotes from it. For the first comp I was inspired by the sentence “a place in earth is a mosaic within larger mosaics” and since a lot of the book is observations in natire and wandering the west coast/pacific northwest images from those areas are masked into a mosaic.
The second, and approved cover was inspired by the coniferous environment of the pacific northwest and their pinecones, and the wild harmony of pinecone itself
The third was inspired by the line “the stratiography of rocks...the outward expanding circles of the trunk of a tree can be seen as texts” which made me want to show a woodcut on the cover
CONTRADICTION DAYS
Since a lot of this book is rooted in JoAnna’s obsession with Agnes Martin and time in Taos I wanted to show an abstraction of a vast sky and landscape as Taos is through torn paper like the deckled edges of fine art books. We opted against any visuals of motherhood and instead went with with colors inspired by Agnes Martin’s own palette and the pastel calm colors common in nurseries and surrounding babies to show that the pregnancy was a part of the writers journey.
The second was also focused on the relationship between the two artists, the top with pieces cut out, only for those pieces to be mirrored on the bottom like Agnes was so deeply intertwined with the writer that reflections occurred, all over a horizontal line that separates the subtitle like the horizontal and grid fixation in Agnes’s work.
And for the third I was interested in the relationship between the artist Agnes Martin and writer Joanna, and wanted to show a piece by Agnes Martin with rigid horizontal stripes curling back to reveal Joanna’s story.
BANG BANG CRASH
I had a lot of fun exploring options for this title, a memoir of a former drummer turned writer. Some unused drafts included a watercolor explosion that felt like it had some 90s alternative stlye to it, and a not completely legible Swiss poster inspired design, and various options between. We landed on a photographic treatment with a drum set that included the same Zidjan cymbal the author uses.
HEAVEN IS A PLACE ON EARTH
Told in a series of essays that balance memoir with fieldwork, Heaven Is a Place on Earth explores different utopian societies and ideologies proposed throughout the United States. What really struck me in terms of design were descriptions of how the societies envisioned their utopias. The final cover, and my favorite concept was inspired by the Auroroa Colony's attempt to create a "second Eden" in Oregon. From there I dug through a lot of images, and wondered what and Eden would look like, and in thinking of an American Eden I was epecially drawn to wildflowers. Like the societies they are idealistic, almost unreal in their beauty, and have some ephemorality to them.
Swipe for an outtake of another comp I enjoyed, one description of heaven was "a city with the streets paved in gold, and since the book follows the author traveling to different comminites, and the american ideal of the road trip, I wanted to show that travel and the golden streets.
Swipe for an outtake of another comp I enjoyed, one description of heaven was "a city with the streets paved in gold, and since the book follows the author traveling to different comminites, and the american ideal of the road trip, I wanted to show that travel and the golden streets.
Generation Occupy
On the ten-year anniversary of the Occupy movement, Generation Occupy sets the historical record straight about the movement’s lasting impacts. Far from a passing phenomenon, Occupy Wall Street marked a new era of social and political transformation, reigniting the labor movement, remaking the Democratic Party and reviving a culture of protest that has put the fight for social, economic, environmental and racial justice at the forefront of a generation.
The movement changed the way Americans see themselves and their role in the economy through the language of the 99 versus the 1 percent. But beyond that, in its demands for fairness and equality, Occupy reinvigorated grassroots activism, inaugurating a decade of youth-led resistance movements that have altered the social fabric
My comps for this were 1) a visualization of the Occupy movement giving people a voice, showing a megaphone, enclosed in an O for Occupy. And 2) how Occupy created language of the 99% and 1% and revived protests, I created pins, like someone would wear to show their views.
The movement changed the way Americans see themselves and their role in the economy through the language of the 99 versus the 1 percent. But beyond that, in its demands for fairness and equality, Occupy reinvigorated grassroots activism, inaugurating a decade of youth-led resistance movements that have altered the social fabric
My comps for this were 1) a visualization of the Occupy movement giving people a voice, showing a megaphone, enclosed in an O for Occupy. And 2) how Occupy created language of the 99% and 1% and revived protests, I created pins, like someone would wear to show their views.
