Islands and Cities


Project Length
March 2021

Discipline
Editorial
Photo-compositing
Book Cover Design

Deliverables
Book Cover


I created a book cover design for Islands and Cities by Sarah Dunn. The short story explores a grotesque trend of dead seagulls covering a polluted city. The book needed a design that hints at the morbid theme without being too revealing. Employing symbolism from the story, I designed two solutions using typography as an image. The designs are a visual interpretation of one line from the story: “The birds blocked out everybody’s mess with the weight of their feathers.”

 

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Type as Image

SOLUTION 1

Islands and Cities is set in the metropolitan city of Porirua, New Zealand. Porirua is described as being heavily polluted by plastic waste that stretches along the coast, harming the large seagull population. To reference this metropolitan area, I arranged the type to look like a city grid map, using rigid 90 degree angles. Like the corners of a city block, the story quickly takes a sharp turn as a gruesome theme develops.

Texturized Text

SOLUTION 2

I developed a dark color palette to complement the story's tone. There is a single mention of color in the story—the seagulls carrying plastic waste in their "cherry beaks". Capturing the morbid quality of this description, I paired a vibrant cherry hue with a dead seagull set against a dark background to create an alarming, yet intriguing image. The seagull’s body is made up of text with tight letter-spacing to signify the high density of seagull deaths.
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Check out some other projects:

Learn a Language ✶ Sanskrit ✶ Claritea ✶ Positively ✶ The Breather
✶ Ti Amo ✶ Islands and Cities ✶ Ornithology ✶ The Belks