A book within a book. From the brief: SylviaWeisler is under contract with a small publisher to write a non-fiction book about personals advertising. . She focuses on the middle-aged and older group who utilize print media rather than on the “too vast territory” of twenty-somethings and the Internet. Some of the characters remain interviewees—material for Sylvia’s book; others, however, enter the author’s private life and become enmeshed in the plot.
From the brief continued: "There is a character in the book called Gladwell Alcox, a spoof of Malcolm Gladwell. We thought we should play this up on the cover, as if the book were a non-fiction book on the writing of personals. We saw a banner running across the bottom corner saying something like 'With a Foreword by Gladwell Alcox' or 'Foreword by Gladwell Alcox'
Sometimes I really like getting a clear directive and then seeing what I can do with it. I know I have said this before but I also like taking a hackneyed visual symbol like an arrow through a heart and seeing if there could still be a new way of doing it.