approval pending

Very simple idea. I like how the pages separate between Canada and the U.S.

I am still working on this cover. We are going to go with another direction but there was something I liked about this. The book is about mean speech.

The author had taken some photographs of Los Angeles and I was given a selection to work with. This one caught my attention right away. There was something about the positioning of the Goodyear blimp above the red flower that was perfect. I had to rework the photograph quite a bit to make the red flower really pop.

This one is almost put to bed. In the end a simpler approach was called for. I used four different flourishes (worms) in the frame element so I still managed to get it on the cover albeit in a less off-putting way.

Kit Winemaking

Daniel Pambianchi



preliminary sketches

We did advanced review copies for this book and when I got first saw it my reaction was less than positive - it lacked finesse. I have reworked it for the final cover.

Before We had Words

S. P. Zitner

The kind of cover you could only get away with on a poetry book. Yes I know the type is really small.

Her Mothers Ashes

This one took quite a bit of back and forth to arrive at the final result. One of the reasons I kind of like the end result is that it doesn't look like one of my covers. I never would have considered using Bodoni Swashes as a cover font until I saw Barbara de Wilde's amazing Milk cover.

Weed Man

The Remarkable Journey of Jimmy Divine
John McCaslin

This printed and laminated cloth cover has a velum jacket that allows the art to show through. Jimmy's name is visible in the negative spaces between the leaves. I just picked it up at my P.O. box on the other side of the border and needless to say it raised a few eyebrows with the custom agents on the way back.

Canada’s Game

This one would fall into the category of just getting out of the way of a great photograph.

Mountain Tea

Peter Van Toorn



The font I used for this cover went out of circulation for a while but is back now. Wonky font for sure but the italic is kind of sweet.

Unusual approach for this poetry cover. The publisher went for the dye-cut holes which is pretty cool.

The Sheep are Back

I was hard at work staring at my computer screen when I looked to my left and remembered that the sheep are back. They migrate back and forth all day long outside my window.