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.

Improvisation

Edward W. Sarah

I wanted the type on this cover to convey "improvisation" and thought reflecting it in the trombone would be interesting.

Pure Product

Quill and Quire, which is our version of Publishers Weekly, does a regular feature on the process of developing a cover. They asked me to do this for a recent poetry cover - Pure Product by Jason Guriel.

(A)
When I am designing a poetry cover I try and find images in the poems that lend themselves to visual expression. Pure product is a line in Guriel’s poem “Thinigness.” It is not always easy for me to describe the process I go through to create an image but there was just something about these old fashioned sprinklers I found in a hardware catalogue that seemed to fit for the notion of thinginess. Unfortunately it made for an unintended connection with the word “product” in the title – as if the sprinklers were the product. If the title had been “Thinginess” it might have worked.

(B)
This is an evolution of the previous direction. I thought that maybe the placement of the type could remove the connection between product and sprinkler but it just created another issue. Water could be interpreted as the “Pure Product”.

(C)
This image comes from another poem in the book “Shopping Cart, Abandoned on Front Lawn”. The shadows cast by the cart on the lawn create “subdivisions the ants won’t obey” I don’t think I ever presented this one because it still made an unintended connection with the title – shopping, consumerism.

(D)
I thought the idea of using a bell jar might be interesting – isolating the pure product. The press liked the image but felt something was missing - no “ahh” moment.



FINAL
From the poem Thinginess

“the necessary tubing
that defines
the nothing blowing
thru ducts.”

The image is an allusion to Magritte's “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”. By opening the straw it solves the problem I encountered with (A) and (B). The straw is not the product. It just defines the nothing blowing thru it.

I worked on the shadows of the shopping cart option (C) for almost an entire day but couldn't get it to work. It reminded me of a point earlier in my career when I was working in Montreal for a design company. I was leaving the office at the end of the day and noticed another designer was hard at work on a logo - it wasn't working and the deadline was the next day. When I came back to work the next morning she was still at work and had been there all night struggling with the same version. It made me realize that you have to listen to your inner designer voice that tells you to put it aside and try something else. It doesn't matter how much effort you have put into any given solution, if it isn't working clear your desk and start again.

This raises another issue that we as designers are always asking ourselves - is it any good? If you work alone you can't bounce ideas off your fellow designers. It sounds a little silly but I work on a solution until I like it and then I present it. You almost have to be your own audience and trust your own reaction to the work.

This cover got selected for 50 Books/50 Covers this year. There is a spot UV varnish on the wet part of the boot.

I was backing up my files and found this rejected cover for a poetry book. I was actually the one who rejected it. It wasn't the right fit for the book but interesting nonetheless.

Egg Packaging

A packaging project I am working on now. The illustrator is the very talented Barbara Zuckerman.

Amnesty International t-shirt

Just finished this project last week.

Climate Change in the 21st Century

Stewart J. Cohen and Melissa W. Waddell

This one is another challenge and brings up a common problem for cover designers. When you are presented with a multitude of images to use on a history book - which one or ones do you choose to best represent the book? I almost always try to avoid a collage approach, which author's seem to always suggest, and if possible find one or two that work well together. This book deals with different cultures within Canada as well so that required an added degree of sensitivity. The first sketch with the frying pan was rejected because it seemed to focus too much on the Anglosaxon-Canadian experience. I worked all morning on the new sketch (top), with the Batman soundtrack on full throttle for motivation, and opted for more of a type only approach with a cooking pot that isn't too culturally specific.

approval pending

Catamount April, 29

One of the benefits of living on the US border is that the Adirondacks are literally in your backyard. Probably should have been working but it was such a beautiful day.


The Summit

Just wrapped this one up. Misandry for those who don't know, including me when I was briefed on this, is the hatred of men.

This cover took a couple of kicks at the can before we settled on the this one. It falls into that category of solutions where once you come up with it you say that it can't possibly be that simple and direct - can it?

Enter the Chrysanthemum

Fiona Tinwei Lam

Even though I have baked a lot of loaves of bread in my life I still get the same thrill each time I open the oven and see finished product. The same is true for book covers. I just received this in the mail. The poet sent me a video of her reading one her beautiful poems - Chrysanthemum.

This one was a tough one. Paraphrasing the author: The thesis of the book is that a distinction can be made between two types of objects: one (objects of natural science) can sustain magnification; the other (objects typical of humanistic inquiry) cannot. This means that humanistic inquiry cannot match scientific inquiry. Because the objects of natural science permit magnification, we can dissect them into smaller and smaller pieces, each time discovering new, important information about them. Cultural objects, such as a photograph, will not yield to microscopic study - we generate noise, not signal.

I will admit it is kind of an odd image but I thought it made for an intriguing cover.

The brief for this cover was to somehow convey the sense that the book is a really a conversation between two philosophers. The cover with the two chairs is the approved version.



stock image

approval pending

Do you think there is an unwritten law in graphic design that you can't put a tapeworm on the cover of a book?

Fall 2009 catalogue cover

I love doing catalogue covers. Because they are more ephemeral than book covers you can push the limits a little further.

Thurston is one of Canada's best know nature poets. I added in the tree branches on the edge at the last minute. I was actually closing up the file when I accidentally deleted one of the of masks from another concept that I didn't present and the tree branches overlapped onto this sketch. I really like it when these kind of accidents occur. It makes you stop and look at things in a new way. I posted the other sketch that the branches came from below.

The Watch that Ends the Night

There was no budget for stock photography on this one so I shot it myself. I ran over to a friends house this morning to photograph his canoe strapped to the roof of his barn. I borrowed his lovely daughter Vanessa's hand made paddle and asked my daughter to photograph me from above in a paddling position. As I said in an earlier post this cover really resonates with me. I spent many hours canoeing in the Laurentians when I was growing up. One of my father's many gifts to me was the art of paddling a canoe.

Anatomy of a cover

This is a recently approved cover for a poetry book. Boxing the compass refers to the ability to memorize all 32 points on a compass. It also refers to the action of a rudderless boat which will eventually rotate in a full circle hitting all the points on a compass. The title poem deals with a father on his death bed.

Note that this is just the sketch so it is still a little rough.

So I wait with you in a crowded dark
where ageing men must revive or perish,
and wonder, my father, what under morphine
your dreams are? The old man on his ship’s deck
and you a boy among the ropes and canvas –
that hour’s sunlight over all the days you’ve seen.



I thought it would be interesting to present a small boat on the cover which also resembled a coffin. For my first sketch I actually took an image of a coffin and put in on water. It was interesting but there was something not quite right about it. It needed to be more ambiguous and the water didn't look right for Newfoundland. I found another image of an actual boat that struck the right balance.