From the brief: This Way is a scholarly work dealing with Holocaust representation with essays by leading Holocaust scholars, that uses as its starting point selected entries from a recent international competition for a new book cover for Tadeusz Borowski’s searing collection of concentration camp stories This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.

The Highway of the Atom

Peter C. Van Wyck

A subarctic mine on the far eastern shores of Great Bear Lake provided Canadian uranium for the bombs detonated over Japan in August 1945. Cover shows a miner launching a piece of iron ore from the mine in Port Radium (Great Bear Lake) into the air.

approval pending

Book is about re-evaluation of Atlantic-Canadian literature. The region is no longer a marginal place stranded outside of time. I thought it would be interesting to show Anne of Green Gables with unruly hair.

The general feeling was that the previous cover was to monochromatic so i punched it up a bit.





I was given a raft of photographs to choose from for this cover and the image below caught my attention. I decided to zero in on just the propeller to make the the cover bold and graphic. The propeller very subtly alludes to maple seeds with their helicopter blades - I might be the only one that sees this but it did occur to me. Type still needs to be finessed a bit more.

approval pending

approval pending

I went in a completely different direction for this one. I was getting a bit stuck on the human skull which wasn't totally appropriate for this collection.

This is an illustration I am working on about doubt and identity in autobiography. I was asked to see if there was a way to reference a well known book that was quite controversial a few years back for blurring the line between fiction and nonfiction.