This book explores the birth of African American literature starting in the eighteenth century. Going into the design process, I knew that I wanted to be respectful as it is a book about honoring culture. This led me pair purple, notably honorable, with a drawing of Phillis Wheatly. Phillis Wheatly was a female “servant” that was known for her literacy. Although this book’s subject is in the past, I wanted to make it feel more modern. I did this with my font, Bookwell, which was created by giving classic forms a trendy feel with ink traps. This iteration was selected due to its scholarly look while not feeling too similar to any other series. This project was completed during my internship at the University of Tennessee Press.
James Schill
Cormac McCarthy’s Neoliberalism is a book with many author’s take on Cormac McCarthy. Going into this design, I wanted to explore how offensive this cover should be as it is a more political and polarizing topic. Many motifs represent this such as money or oil rigs. I used these in my visual exploration and landed on a simple cover that makes a statement. This project also required an interior design. I learned the rules and principles of book layout and put together sample pages. After many iterations, I landed on a layout that feels like the cover. This project was completed during my internship at the University of Tennessee Press.
Travis Stern
This project was the final project for GRDS 355. My class was approached by the University of Tennessee Press and asked to create a book cover for Travis Stern's Ball Players on Stage. The 18 submissions were then judged and the one picked would be published. Mine was selected and this book was published. During my drafting process, I explored two main styles. One utilizes bright colors and motifs from baseball cards and theater and the other uses imagery of the five baseball players spoke on in the book paired with hand drawn ornamentation to create a newspaper effect. I ended up going with the bright and colorful version. I wanted to create a modern take on an old classic with this iteration. Baseball cards from the 1910's used imperfect typography as it was done by hand, so I wrote out the title to recreate this effect.
Donald W. Linzey
This cover is the second edition of A Natural History Guide to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There were a couple of requirements such as certain typefaces and the bear picture for this cover. I know I wanted reference the previous cover in the use of several separate images but gave it a little bit of a bolder feel. These images were the biggest challenge of this project as they were all scans of old film photos with low resolution. This led me down many paths to include these, but I eventually landed on green wash over the photos to match the background. This layout also felt more appropriate for the display face used. This project was completed during my internship at the University of Tennessee Press.
Rejected Designs
Here are a few proposed designs I worked on. These are designs I enjoyed, but the book ended up taking a different visual direction.
