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.

Approval pending. These kind of subjects present their own challenges. How can you say something original about a subject that has been so exhaustively mined for visual ideas.

Approval pending.

This one proved tougher than most. It is a novel about a dystopian future where livestock have become extinct. The final chosen solution is the one with the broken plate. I added the cows into the design. I think the problem with a cover like this is that when you try and approach the subject matter head on it doesn't work. The trick is to find a lateral way to approach it leaving more to the imagination of the viewer. I really liked the option with the fence and the partially obscured "i", but it was maybe a little hard to decode. A bit of a homage to Paul Rand.

Have you ever seen a more conflicted looking war hero? The book is about a French-Canadian soldier who is awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration of the British Commonwealth and is turned into a reluctant hero.

Just coming up for air. What a last couple of weeks!! This is a recent cover I worked on. Not sure it will be accepted but there was something I really liked about it. The book is about risks of globalization for the U.S. These kind of covers are always a challenge. How can you express this in a new way when there has already been so much done on this subject. I went for the world as a fish bowl with the U.S. which oddly enough looks like a gold fish when coloured orange. Maybe I am fixated on dead gold fish which I tried on another cover as well.

Another one in the works. Small format 6 x 6 with the possibility of extra colours or special printing techniques.

AAUP Jacket and Cover Selections 2010

I am working on this one right now. The book deals with the fact that Freud didn't have the benefit of the all the advances that have been made in neuroscience than can now be used to complement analysis. I liked the fact that the brain scanning table resembled an analysts couch. It makes a nice contrast it with a victorian armchair.

Writing Lovers

Méira Cook

Amnesty International

This is a t-shirt design I am working on. The only stipulation is that I have to use the barb wire element from their logo.

Sins of the Flesh

Rod Preece

This cover was one of several that won in the AAUP (Association of American University Presses) book and jacket show. The version on the bottom is the way the cover looked at the final stage of mechanical production. I spent about a day drawing the pig but it just wasn't working. At the eleventh hour I looked for an image in one of my royalty free books of line art and found a new pig. Thankfully the client agreed that it was an improvement. There was a time when those trusted line art books were put to good use as university presses don't usually have budgets for images. I think I will do a future post that just features those covers.

Parker Series

Now there are six.

Judging Obscenity

Christopher Nowlin

This cover is progressing. The first sketch which I posted earlier met with a positive reaction with some caveats. The type treatment and overall feeling was too whimsical for the poetry. I turned up the volume and went for a harder edged feel.

2nd sketch


First sketch presented

Montreal's Best BYOB Restaurants

Joanna Fox

Without trying to over think this one too much, I went for a light hearted, fun approach.

Amassing Power

David Massell

From the back cover: At the turn of the century American industrialist J.B. Duke set his sights on one of North America's greatest and most spectacular rivers - the Saguenay ... to develop, and sell its tremendous hydroelectric potential. I was given a stack of photos to work with and this one of Duke in a bowler hat jumped out at me. The curve of his hat and a curve in the famous river.

Another one in this ongoing series. Because showing a specific national currency wouldn't work, the problem became how do you show money without showing it?

Chess Pieces

David Solway

This is one from the vault. It was my first poetry cover. I had to scan all the actual chess pieces because I didn't have a camera yet.

Catalogue Covers

This is a selection of catalogue covers from over the years.

The Lost Franklin Expedition

I guess if you stick around long enough you not only do multiple covers for the same author but also on the same subject matter. The first is a poetry cover about the lost Franklin expedition. It is a three part fold that reveals the graves of the Franklin party on Beechey Island in the Canadian arctic on the last fold. The second book is about to be published and is a collection of letters from Lady Franklin in her quest to find out the fate of her husband.

Running in Prospect Cemetery

Susan Glickman
New and Selected Poems

This one required a lot of tweaking to make sure people got the idea readily. One of the last 08 covers - what a year!

Opening Doors Wider

Edited by Sylvia Bashevkin

This is another one of those covers where the title drives the design.

Maisonneuve magazine

The Alcoholhic Monkeys of St. Kitts

I found this in my files when I was cleaning out my office. Maisonneuve is a Montreal based magazine - New Yorker with edge. It was kind of a dream job for a designer. I redesigned the entire magazine from front cover to back including the masthead. It is still going strong today. Check it out.

A Fragile Social Fabric?

Raymond Breton et al.

This cover must have taken an entire day to produce. I literally had to thread each of those needles in photoshop.

Psychotherapy as Religion

William Epstein

Culture and Consumption

Grant McCracken

Book cover as disposable piece of packaging.

Interview with Christopher Tobias

I just did an interview with Christopher Tobias that you can check out here. He is a very talented cover designer and you can check out his own covers here

Technonatures

White and Wilbert, editors

This cover plays off another cover I did recently. I find this happens quite frequently where cover solutions build and play off each other.

The Jugger

Richard Stark

Number 4 in this series. A jugger is a safecracker.

In the Shadow of the Giant

Joseph Contreras

Gay Male Pornography

Christopher N. Kendall

I would put this cover into the "type only with a twist" category.