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I recently traveled to Toronto to network heckle Chip Kidd and frequent the Umbra store. Somewhere between this and this, I convinced ECW Press to give me a shot at a book cover.

Next thing I know, a brief arrives in my inbox and the author, Jamie Sharpe, is listing Julie Morstad as inspiration for imagery. Her aesthetic oozes the same anachronistic yet slightly sinister feel as the book. I quickly realize the bar is set high and start to panic.

The following Saturday night, after a few inadequate mockups involving aprons (“husbandry”) and antlers (“animal”) have materialized, I’m out socializing drinking scotch on a pal’s living room floor and I realize there’s a framed print hanging on her wall that seems to have been crafted specifically for one of the poems in the collection. So I deciphered a few initials in the illegible signature and set out to stalk the recent ACAD grad who made it.

Just short of Facebooking a total stranger and/or going to the mall to surprise him at his part-time retail job, I found Reagan Cole McLean.

Here is the aforementioned stanza, from the poem entitled The Dundreary-Arts:

“What is the parable of the whale?  He floats wall-less,
Without history, secure in his girth like a slumbering god.
Awake: for we have a silver dollar with your name.”

This is the second runner-up, using artwork from the interior. I was drawn to the graphic nature of the piece and the obscure assortment of imagery: a dead bird, a hammer, a timepiece, a torso, and a screaming mouth. Good mix.

While The Sun Is Above Us takes readers deep into Sudan through the intertwined narratives of two women. In the midst of a bloody civil war, Adut is brutally captured and held as a slave for eight years. Sandra, fleeing her life in Canada, travels to South Sudan as an aid worker but soon finds herself unwittingly embroiled in a violent local conflict.

For the cover, I had the privilege of purchasing a photograph from Françoise Lacroix’s portfolio at Panoptika.

Five Steps to an Ordinary Life

1. Get a real job.
2. Stop seeing the world as a series of potential paintings.
3. Learn how to talk about the weather.
4. Do the things that normal people do.
5. Figure out what normal people actually do.

The synopsis for the 2012 NeWest Press release: 27-year-old Frieda Zweig is at an impasse. Behind her is a string of failed relationships and half-forgotten ambitions of being a painter; in front of her lies the dreary task of finding a real job and figuring out what “normal” people do with their lives. Then, a classified ad for a ‘78 phonograph in the local paper introduces Frieda to Gladys, an elderly woman who long ago gave up on her dreams of being a dancer.

FOIP!

We’ve all heard of it, we’ve all be affected by it, yet no one actually knows what it is. So, AU Press and Lorna Stefanick bring you a layperson’s guide:

This was one of those titles that completely confounded me for about three weeks, until I thought of this concept the night before the deadline and woke at 4AM to shoot the image. I don’t recommend photoshop work before breakfast. This project also spawned the realization that the lock on my sublet door is faulty.

Reading this book will be a lot like listening to your grandma tell stories about going to the movies. In a good way.

I’ve been restoring a drawing from an old theatre poster for the cover. It will look something like this:

The “Nick and Nora Charles” of academia: two amateur detectives are pulled into a web of deceit and violence involving corrupt politicians and the illegal cross-border dumping of toxic waste. There’s some Mafia talk too.

The author suggested using barrels somehow, and instead of going photographic, I turned to a simple graphic.

Footnote: I always find it interesting how titles come to be. Here is the passage that explains the phrase and how it applies to the plot: When you see something you don’t want to see, just pretend you didn’t see it. It was part of some kind of law. David called it the Law of Ontological Inertia. Lives in motion along certain paths tend to stay in motion along precisely those paths. Unless some terrific force intervenes. Also known, he said, as business as usual.

Although it sounds a lot like the name of a punk rock band, it is actually a book based on Todd McCallum’s Queen’s University doctoral thesis. It examines homeless men and the provision of public and private relief in Great Depression era British Columbia.

McCallum is currently researching comic books and so he steered me in that direction, suggesting a graphic illustration in which the city is surrounded by hobo jungles, as if under attack. I liked the atypical approach; most books on this topic go with a black+white photo of unemployed transient Vancouverites standing by the tracks.

I became fixated on cardboard throughout the drawing process (see hobo sign above) and so my backup plan (let’s face it: the comic is rather informal for PhD-wielding author being published by a university press) involves positioning shipping icons in a way that suggests economic downturn, followed by relief, followed by Fordism-style labour camps and job creation:

So, now we wait for approval, if it ever comes.

A few firsts:

the first kid’s book I’ve worked on, my first collaboration with Annick Press, and the first time I’ve attempted to use condiments as a design element.

I’m learning some interesting food facts along the way. (You don’t necessarily have to be between the ages of 8 and 12 to enjoy them.) According to an 18th-century travel writer, the illustrious sandwich was named after the fourth Earl of Sandwich, a man with a serious gambling problem.

The talented illustrator is Sa Boothroyd and I’m using a typeface that would make Bringhurst shudder. (Stovetop by Font Diner.) The handwritten font was created based off Sa’s printing.

The Mariola: 20 levels of luxury cruise ship and amenities. Drawn to accompany Esme Claire Keith’s forthcoming novel, which will be released by freehand books in the fall. The diagram will be printed in full colour on the inside of a large back cover flap.

Click for more detail:

Guildenstern: You can’t not be on a boat.

Rosencrantz: I’ve frequently not been on boats.

Guildenstern: No, no. What you’ve been is not on boats.

— Tom Stoppard

Ebooks need covers too.

I just gave Garry Ryan’s first two Detective Lane Mysteries fresh faces in time for their Kobo debuts. I hope the books will be reprinted one day too, if only for the deep designerly satisfaction that will come from lining up the matching spines on my shelf.

The aesthetic for the series is being pieced together book by book, keeping with the same greyscale photographic approach and hairline type as the latest instalments, SMOKED and MALABARISTA.

(see the original Queen’s Park cover that was published by NeWest Press in 2004)

(see the 2006 cover here)