Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.
Lemony Snicket
Book jacket proposals for Algonquin Books, designed in 2014 and 2015.
The Future for Curious People
A novel by Gregory Sherl, The Future for Curious People is about relationships and love. What if you had the opportunity to see your romantic future with someone before it even happened? This is the futuristic world in which we meet Evelyn and Godfrey. Evelyn is in the process of having her future with her boyfriend Adrian read by Dr. Chin. Godfrey is getting ready to propose to his girlfriend, Madge, who is unsure about their future together. Evelyn and Godfrey meet, and the novel goes on to be filled with quirky and colorful imagery.
With the cover, I attempted to evoke the technology of this particular future, and also one of the more vivid visions, with many rabbits.
The first image here was selected for the first edition of the book.
All I have in this World
A novel by Michael Parker, All I have in this World is the story of two strangers who meet at a used car dealership in Texas. They are both interested in the same car, and ultimately decide to buy it together. So begins a novel about the power of friendship.
The cover was meant to evoke a sense of place: the heart of West Texas, a used car dealership, and a baby blue car.
The first image here was selected for the paperback version of the book.
The Road from Gap Creek
A novel by Robert Morgan, The Road from Gap Creek returns to a setting Morgan has written a lot about. Set in the Appalachians, Morgan tells the story of a family set during World War II and the Great Depression. The novel is a family saga set against an uncertain future.
Work on this book in particular required a consideration for the nuances of marketing a hardcover vs. marketing a paperback. The hardcover could be more literary and expansive, while the paperback should be more popular and personal. They both should evoke a sense of place and time, as those are central to the story.
The Happiest People In the World
A novel by Brock Clarke, The Happiest People in the World is a multinational thriller involving conspiracy theories, comics, and so much more. Brock Clarke's own website describes it by saying: "take the format of a spy thriller, shape it around real-life incidents involving international terrorism, leaven it with dark, dry humor, toss in a love rectangle, give everybody a gun, and let everything play out in the outer reaches of upstate New York—there you have an idea of Brock Clarke’s new novel."
The covers I proposed were for the paperback version of the novel. They were supposed to evoke the same feeling of the hardcover: dry humor and comics.
Retrospective: Reflecting on every experience allows me to learn from my own successes and failures.
These book covers were almost always the result of a previous designer's work not being accepted by the publishers. Because of that, these were an exercise in working quickly to achieve results that evoked a different feeling or sense of place based on the contents of the novel. This taught me how to be a design chameleon, flexing design muscles in a variety of different ways to achieve different results.