Book Cover Design
They say you can't judge a book by it's cover...and yet we all do it anyway. Which makes this a fun and important job! I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of designing an attention grabbing book cover that tells the story within its pages in a single glance.
Sex Without Stress
The challenge of this book was the same as it was for the website I designed for its author- how to tell a story about human sexuality without...humans. Because the target demographic of readers for this book is literally anyone out of puberty, we couldn't so much as show hands touching because even fairly androgynous hands would tell a story that was race-specific. We needed to remain neutral to gender, race and sexual orientation while depicting one of the most complex human dynamics on the planet. I came up with the idea of using penguins which are fairly conducive to anthropomorphizing, and did a deep dive to find penguins in various postures that I could juxtapose with each other, against the backdrop of a bedroom, to tell a story of sexual frustration that is simultaneously light-hearted and evocative.
Beautiful Cloud, Faraway Sky
This is a recent book of mine. I wanted to convey a sense of longing. I was struck by the idea of telling the story of loneliness visually through a single cloud in the sky, and layered in another visual meta-narrative with two birds, one flying behind another. It's understated and evocative in ways I find delightful.
Earth & Sky
Another book of my own. Designing this cover I wanted to convey a felt sense of the magic of nature.
When The Gods Were Half Human
In this design I was reaching for an expression of duality, yin and yang but also the deep visceral grit of humanness through a lens of serenity that is often the vantage point for my poetry...observing the devastation of life from a perspective that at times is from the dirt looking towards the stars and other times from heaven looking toward the human experience.
