this rendition of volume four features a couple photographs from the u.s. marshall’s collection of the unabomber’s personal items. as referenced in a post by fast codesign, the images and items have an eerie beauty to them. naturally, i wanted to see what they’d look like as a book cover. here’s my take. the typeface is once again century gothic.

i’ve started up  a fresh dose  of the nine to five gig this week. it’s been a few years, but it feels good, even if it’s a temp position. so i’ve been crankin’ out some graphic design work for portland state’s recycling department, which involves a lot of signage. the department has predominately used unskilled photography in the past. how exciting can pictures of trash and recyclables really be? i’ve decided to take a fresh route by implementing some quick sketched illustration work instead. here’s a couple of ‘em in this here fake book cover.

the cooper black typeface goes nicely with the playful nature of the drawings.

i could use a whiskey cola. cheers.

This is an age-old style that I’ve used a million times, including on a few Recurra Thematica covers: break the layout into registers, using the white space as a container for the cover copy; use multiple points of “implied boundary” (place where the lines up on both sides); set the spine text to line up cleanly with the cover image; etcetera. But this time I used a couple different tricks, some unsettling styles that throw off the perfect-register/boundary/balance theme: the four different images, all from contrasting vantage points; the “static” lines that cross the images; the opaque, redundant use of the title in the outer edge of the images; and, finally, the white space on the top and bottom of the text, awkwardly setting it apart from the perfect proportion of the registers. All in all, it creates a composition that all at once has obvious balance and disturbing imbalance. I’m starting to really enjoy this kind of cover comp. It has an academic look, with a sort of punk rock final touch. Enjoy.

BRIAN:

i’m late posting this one. i had a nice long weekend that’s left me a bit blurred and bruised, but it was all worth it. here’s a nice geometry driven design. i was working all day on a couple banners for my day job at PSU Recycles. I used a very similar aesthetic, and thought it might be interesting to see the same style as a book cover. and here it is. the typefaces are century gothic, garamond, and tw cen condensed. yep.

I really had fun making this cover, and it only took an hour, which is surprising. I pretend that Recurra Thematica is an easy process, but, really, I fret over these covers a great deal. Sure, it’s a simple exercise, but it’s still my work, and I can’t take that lightly.

I’ve had the hotdog idea in my head for a couple days. I love how absurd it is. So when I got home from work today I whipped out that drawing in about ten minutes with a sharpie, and then turned it into a live trace/colored the stroke, gave it the shine, etc. I’ve been enjoying using a lot of different fonts lately: today’s choices are Honey Script for the cursive, Georgia for the serif, and Impact for the san serif. I love the way they contrast each other. It’s very goofy, very light-hearted.

BRIAN:

this is a bit of a lazy one. i’m tired. i do like squished bug squiggle and the sparseness. and in keeping with such, that’s all.

oh, the typeface is century gothic. love.

B

the slow loris must be one of the creepiest/cutest woodland creatures amongst us. here’s one getting tickled. it loves it.

i’m only slightly obsessed with this tiny being, and i’ve had an urge recently to make art in its honor. i plan to paint one soon. but for now, a hand drawn fake book cover will have to do. the typeface is chunkfive. cheers.

ELLERY:

This cover was a lot of fun to make. Easy and clean. I love white books but I never make them. I’m always overdoing it with the background textures and colors, so I thought this time I’d take a cue from Brian and keep it simple. This title has a lot of implications, a lot of different images attached to it for me, so I’m enjoying keeping it in the abstract realm right now. Plus I’m a huge fan of mixing fonts and using italicized lowercases (as in, “a novel,” and “praise for”). The typefaces are Synchro and Bell MT, two of my favorites (for very different reasons).

Yowza! It’s been a long time since we saw some good old-fashioned high-speed book design! That’s right, kids. Recurra Thematica has returned! Brian came to my show last Friday, and, after many, many drinks, we decided it was time to give the public what they want: fake book covers. I’ve been drawing a ton lately, and I thought it would be fun to start this RT cycle out with a graphic novel book cover. I’m going to use this illustration as the profile pic/upcoming flyer for my band, VERSO/RECTO, who, if you haven’t heard yet, can be found at: http://www.facebook.com/VERSORECTO. It’s a hideous, fish-eyed double portrait of Brad and I (which I thought fit perfectly with the title). The typeface is Antipasto. Enjoy!

BRIAN:

i’m mighty pleased to end the long hiatus of recurra thematica with my posting for day one of volume four. i’ve chosen this mock title for a short but growing collection of poetry i’m tinkering with.

i put this cover design together late last night/early this morning. it’s nice, clean, and simple. the typefaces are ostrich sans medium and black, which i snagged via the league of moveable type. enjoy.

B

Deep sea creatures fascinate me. I recently watched a documentary on life at the depths of our planet. Hence the imagery for this design.

Only one percent of earth’s darkest floors, corners, and crevices have been explored. Each exploration reveals new species of life. I’m not sure where I’m going with this. But it’s these kinds of things that were bouncing around my brain as I designed this final cover for Unchanging. I don’t think anything really goes unchanged. The universe is expanding at an exponential rate, and bizarre creatures yet to be discovered creep about the dark voids of our planet, each of us unaware of the other’s existence. And here we are. At the end of volume three. Goodnight, Hagfish. Sweet dreams, Gulper Eel. Buenas noches, bioluminescent creatures. And of course, sleep tight, Giant Squid. We’re looking for you.

Post seasons greetings ladies and gents. So, I wanted to do a purely typographic design for day nine. I almost succeeded. Then I couldn’t resist the skinny rectangles. The typeface is Bembo. It’s a newly acquired font family of mine. I’ll be using it for an interior I’m working on. I needed to break it in. Comfy fonts.

That’s a lot of layers you got there. I was trying to add a bit of depth to this cover design using basic shapes/forms. And a lot of rotation/opacity fluctuation. I often employ the use of textures/patterns in my design work. This is certainly an example of such. The slight colors were accidentally composed in a purposeful manner via some saturation, and accentuation of shadows.

I like this one. It’s somewhat startling/busy/uncomfortable, but also intriguing. (to me.)

ELLERY:

Well, I’m officially becoming obsessive: I decided for this one to try and build some cool symbols/my own secret code. Language is always changing, for good or ill. But there are dead languages, too, frozen in time. I’d like to think that this language is ancient, discarded, a system of symbols built to instruct a forgotten people. And I’m starting to really like putting the same design on the front and back cover, a trick I’ve stolen from Brian. As always, that’s the beauty of this project: being able to swipe little bits of inspiration from everything around you, including the “competition.” Enjoy. Two days left, kids.

I’m in an airplane thousands of feet above you. And I have the beer pees. This is a true story.

ELLERY:

For today’s design, I decided to have a little abstract fun. First, the typesetting doesn’t line up with the square grid, which creates a strange tension for me. Second, there’s the single pink square hiding out at the bottom of the unchanging grid, a little play on the nature of the title. Third, the spine is missing Vinnie’s name and has been flipped upside down and printed three times for some fun redundancy. Sometimes it’s fun just to float in the ether.