BOOK COVERS

Book covers are something I have loved designing—capturing a theme, feeling, or expression and translating that into visual language. In the following projects, I applied different methods of photography, illustration and typography to convey, what I perceived, as the heart of each novel.

Art Director: Perry Baldwin

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A Separation, by Katie Kitamura, is a mysteriously dark contemporary fiction novel. The narrative follows a woman’s journey through Greece in search of her estranged husband, in order to finalize their separation. The novel is uniquely dark and suspenseful, drawing attention to the breaking bond between a previously happy husband and wife.

Joseph Boyden is an author I admire for his visceral portraits of Canadian Indigenous people and culture. These three novels, designed as a trilogy, are simultaneously stark and beautiful, oftentimes based on historical events. I wanted to approach these covers cautiously, avoiding the use of cliché and tired imagery relating to Indigenous peoples and yet still conceptualize the over-arching themes of the novels. After much experimentation with different materials, I photographed pieces of nature that can be found in Northern Ontario, where much of the stories are based. The green moss, feathers, and birch bark all interact with the thick hand-drawn typography in a unique way, representing the novels’ own unique narratives.

The Enchanted, by Rene Denfeld, is a mesmerizing novel that contrasts whimsical imagery with dismal descriptions of prison life for death row inmates. By juxtaposing the delicate, gold foil birds in flight with the dense, hard qualities of cement, I aimed to portray the depth of this novel while referencing the glimpses of magic interwoven into an otherwise devastating story.