a little "personal" creativity

Problem: The only affordable edition of the obscure russian sci-fi novel you're dying to read comes with a less-than fashionable cover.

Solution: Construct your own unique and slightly-less-crappy cover using manilla folders, gouache, a xerox machine, and a freshman-level graphic design sensibility:


"Roadside Picnic is based on a fictional alien visitation to planet Earth, whose aftermath has led to the creation of "Zones" in the areas where the aliens had possibly landed. Such zones exhibit strange and dangerous phenomena not understood by humans, and contain artifacts with inexplicable, seemingly supernatural properties."

Long Cold Winter

Winter is thawing, and the season's book cover designs emerge from their hibernation...

This is technically a sketch that got killed at an early stage, for Penguin UK.

The design brief specifically requested this scene, so don't feel suspicious if the final cover looks a bit similar.

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 Algonquin Books has been good to me lately, and here are a few jobs I've done for them this winter:



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Nathaniel Philbrick's new book is a historical and academic supplement to another book. This one took a few tries, but the final result is as follows:

Cloth spine, with foil stamping and a blind deboss. A classy little book.

Here are a few early attempts that fell just a little short of that "classiness" benchmark:


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Next up is a book that I thoroughly enjoyed. It details the events leading up to, during, and directly resulting from the life of Joan of Arc. Nancy Goldstone's main argument is that much of Joan's surprising success was enabled from behind the scenes by Dauphin Charles VII's cunning mother, Yolande of Aragon. These first few attempts I'm rather fond of:



In the end, we went for a less 'history book'-ish look, featuring a re-touched photo by the wonderful Ann Cutting.

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And finally, who doesn't love a fishing-themed muder-mystery?


It took a few tries to get the specific Royal Wulff fly to look the way the author wanted...

...but in the end, I think I came pretty close. Hopefully the hardcore anglers among you will forgive any inaccuracies I may be guilty of.

The holidays are here, and along with them comes my new cover for Garrison Keillor's A Christmas Blizzard. The printed cover features very festive embossed lettering:



Those of you who were fans of my killed African Affair comps will be happy to know that Plume has picked up one of my favorite unused designs for the paperback:
 

And Finally, fresh from the printer is this cover design for Alan Lomax, a biography of a prolific early-20th-century folklorist and music historian. The cover itself is printed with two spot colors: matte orange and glossy black:
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The Elephant Vanishes

This is a new poster I designed for the Haruki Murakami "Drawing Inspiration" competition at Nowness.com:


It's based on the short story collection The Elephant Vanishes, which was my surreal introduction to Murakami's work, and one of my favorite books of his.

The voting period for the competition takes place this week, so go take a look because there is a lot of good art (you have to be logged in to vote, but it's a very neat site so you should sign up anyway.)

Sketches from a speeding cab - Manhattan and Long Island

New Design Work

As new as I am to the illustration world, I'm even less experienced at design. I never really worked photos, type, and found art before I started working at Penguin, so I'm constantly questioning my design skills. My lack of confidence has kept me from posting some of my more traditional design work, but looking back on these I realized that maybe they aren't too bad, really.


AN AFRICAN AFFAIR
Rejects (not commercial enough):





And the very commercial final cover:




COMPOSED
Photograph by Annie Leibovitz



CABIN

Photograph by Brian Vanden Brink



ARTHUR MILLER SERIES
The final set:




and some rejects:



JAMES JOYCE
rejects:


and the final:

Around the Arts

If you happen to have access to the Philadelphia Inquirer, I designed and illustrated the cover page for the Arts & Entertainment section. The theme is "Around the Arts in 111 Days", and features reviews on various events and shows around the area.

Mystic Travelogues

As most illustrators will tell you, it's rare than any of the prospective authors who occasionally approach you about working on a book they're writing will ever speak to you again. In fact, well over 90% of them will never finish their book, much less find a publisher, and then convince the publisher to hire that artist they like.

However, this is just what J.C.Nusbaum did. I was contacted by J.C. a few months ago about working on the cover for his children's book The Mystic Travelogues. Interestingly, he requested a design similar to an old project I had done in school. The beauty of student work is that you can recycle the good parts later for a commercial project, and end up with something fresh.



(detail)

Wedding & New Work

Once again, sorry about the lack of updates recently, I've been busy getting married.


The wedding took place at a beautiful manor farm in Chester County, PA, close to where each of us grew up.
In keeping with that general feel, we then honeymooned in the English countryside:



Now it's back to work, covering more new books (or trying to, at least).
Here's the latest batch:

These 3 are my favorite killed covers for Nathaniel Philbrick's history of Nantucket.




The final cover ended up being something much more straightforward and in keeping with the 'non-fiction' look. Completely understandable, but I always like trying something out-of-the-ordinary first.




In the fiction category, here's an approved cover for a story about a black pioneer family in the American Midwest.


And another option that wasn't used, but I'm still a little fond of.



More to come soon,
I promise.