Editorial · Illustration · Book covers

Three book covers, three moods

A book cover project for Little, Brown and Company: three cover concepts for three very different books — a study of myth, a true-crime story and a children’s classic. Each one is a full jacket: front, spine and back.

The idea

For each book I looked for a visual metaphor that could carry the whole story, and avoided the obvious, literal symbols.

What I did

— Concept, typography and layout of a full jacket (front, spine, back) for each book

— The Hero with a Thousand Faces: a prism effect that splits one face into many

— Zodiac: the title assembled from real archival documents of the case

— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: the cover drawn by hand

— Mock-ups for all three books

01

The Hero with a Thousand Faces

I avoided literal mythological symbols and focused on the idea of one recurring heroic archetype that appears in many cultures and stories. The portrait is distorted through a prism-like effect that splits the face into multiple identities: it is one person and many people at once — a visual metaphor for Campbell’s “thousand faces”.

02

Zodiac

The design is built around the feeling of an active investigation: fragmented evidence, documents, reports and unresolved clues. The title is assembled from real archival materials of the Zodiac case — FBI files, police reports and the killer’s letters — so the cover becomes an evidence board. On the back, the killer’s crosshair symbol sits behind the blurb.

03

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

A bright, playful take on a classic that avoids overly literal fairy-tale imagery. I drew the cover by hand, turning the Yellow Brick Road into a looping path that carries the title through the composition. Its swirl also echoes the tornado that carried Dorothy away to Oz, so the line is both the storm that starts the story and the road that leads you through it. The back is almost empty, with just the ruby slippers.