Broken Book

Everybody needs a little time away. 

After a lengthy self-imposed Broken Social Scene hiatus I’ve recently been listening to a lot of  the collective’s music again. So, to fill the lull before the spring releases I thought I'd revisit Stuart Berman’s book on the band. 

It’s been almost two years since its release and I never did get around to posting anything on the book. Perhaps because the project took on some pretty epic proportions. It was a huge year-long labour but a labour of love. So, for your listening and viewing pleasure here’s the BSS tome (and the project that came close to breaking me a time or two) This Book is Broken.

Hope Burned

From the synopsis of Brent Laporte’s haunting first novel: 

You sit down at the weathered harvest table to write a letter to your son. 

You need to explain the horrific events of the night, the circumstances that stained your hands with so much blood — the horrors that led you to take 

the lives of your own father and grandfather.

You journey back through darkness, deliberately, tentatively, to recover your own childhood. You compose your captivity, your torture, and the 

brutality of the men you’ve just killed. This was life on the farm: the strange and unspeakable things that went on.

And still, hope burned.

I used the combination of my own chicken scratch penmanship knocked out of a dark and dreary photo of the inside of my barn in all it’s creepy glory taken before its slow renovation began last year. I thought it important to use an actual ball point pen (not a brush or quill) to accurately depict the moment in time and mind. The type, although, harkens both the grown man and the childhood being remembered. I carried a hint of the “weathered harvest table” onto the book’s spine. Finally to bring at least a little light of hope to the cover a added a tiny silhouette of a hawk seen soaring in the blue sky above through a missing board in the barn’s hay loft.

Isolation

Proof that any great design is as much about the space in between.

This is Pete Townshend’s isolated guitar track from The Who’s 1978 release Who Are You.

Hot Off the Press

We launched the latest issue of Coupe, #22, the International Design Annual a few weeks back. Just now recovering.

You can check out more launch party pics on Facebook.

From the Archives, 2008

Questions, Questions.

Update (June 30, 2011): This cover was just nominated for an ADCC award for its cover. We’ll see if it wins silver or gold in November.

Over the past decade I’ve designed jackets and covers for literary pixie and maverick Sheila Heti’s previous books The Middle Stories and Ticknor. Designing for Sheila is always a challenge and a blast. I feel I have to live up to the risk-taking literary nature of her writing. How Should A Person Be? was no different. I found my self substituting Book Cover for Person in the title for my own purposes and inspiration.

The end result combines a black case holding the title and author name in a white stamp and a (little less than) half jacket sporting an unflattering and telling snapshot of Sheila and Margaux, the main characters in the novel. The image obsessively repeats over and over. The jacket sitting at the base of the book obscures Sheila’s oversized name. In doing so the typography reflects Sheila’s longing for fame and her subsequent struggles with it.

Perhaps speaking to the book’s title, perhaps representing the book’s two main characters, I purposely mismatched the dots over the i’s in Sheila’s name.

Sheila asked if I could somehow create end papers that would harken tacky wallpaper of Miami hotel rooms, linking to an early and important chapter in the book. I researched existing wallpaper and imagery but nothing was quite right so I created this front and back set from scratch. It was the perfect element to tie the whole package together.

A New Yet Rusty Blog

I’ve recently launched a new blog titled SMALLTOWNBOY about life on the farm. Hope to see you there.

Filmores from The Grand. Toronto

Bird out of water

The final design for the often hilarious One Bird’s Choice. The subtitle nicely sums this one up. I needed to find a way of quickly relating the crux of the story while hitting the proper note and being cognizant not alienate too much of the readership by going too alt or indie even though the book has its leanings in that direction. After searching high and low for fitting footwear to represent the books main characters and the perfect welcome mat (a tough find, thanks Walmart) I set up this little still life (shot by Edward Pond). I fashioned a guinea fowl (that's the butt ugly bird on the cover who lives with Iain’s parents on their farm) footprint out of putty and stamped a trail of muddy bird prints leading from the back cover to the welcome mat. A subtle typographic detail; the two little red dingbat dots on either side of the author’s name are meant to represent his parents whereas the red apostrophe in the word Bird’s harkens Iain and the red a connection to the bird.

When I saw this photo of the author Iain Reid I immediately started laughing and chomping at the bit to make a fitting cover out of it. The photo, to me projected a classic portrait of a lost twenty-something in the 21st century. By using the type bar as a blindfold the author was obscured just enough. Plus Iain looked like he had just walked off the set of a Wes Anderson film. The treatment was ultimately deemed too “alternative” but it did lead to some typographic solutions that worked well on the final cover.

Toot, Toot

In the span of 24 hrs I received notification from Communication Arts that this one made it into their 2010 Design Annual and right on the heels of that news the ADCC informed me that the book had won 3 awards in its show. A couple hours later an email arrived from Applied Arts telling me they had selected it for their annual too. And I didn't even know it had been entered! Pretty nice.

This book was posted in greater detail on this blog back in April.

A horn tooting update: On Nov. 4 the book was awarded 2 Golds and a Silver at the ADCCs.

Annabel

05.10.2010 update: Annabel has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize! One more step to go!

20.09.2010 update: Today Annabel was longlisted for the Giller Prize! Congrats Kathleen!

From the jacket:

In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people are privy to the secret — the baby’s parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to raise the child as a boy named Wayne. But as Wayne grows to adulthood within the hyper-masculine hunting culture of his father, his shadow-self — a girl he thinks of as “Annabel” — is never entirely extinguished, and indeed is secretly nurtured by the women in his life.

Instead of going the route of human boy/girl imagery I thought it much more visually compelling to take from the rugged and beautiful setting of Labrador and its natural environment using the caribou — a recurring image in the novel — to depict the duality of its main character. Combining elements I used a faded and blurred, almost watery image of a young doe being encroached upon from above by a massive rack of male antlers. But like the book, all is not as it seems. The caribou, you see, is the only member of the deer family in which both male and females grow antlers.

I’ve been questioned at Open Book Toronto

The Proust Questionnaire.

Insta-Video. Fun For The Whole Family!

Got a few minutes to spare in your day? Make a video for a great song that never had one.

This took all of 5 minutes to throw together. It's no "Thriller" but here's hoping Ian would have liked it.

The Neighbourhood

A less shiny Las Vegas

Photos taken on a recent trip.

COUPE 2010 Call For Entries