At the University of Illinois Press, I designed book covers for biographical and research publications. At the UI Press I collaborated with team members and book authors to help bring a book's cover to life. A fun bonus was learning more about the subject matter I designed for! These topics ranged from women and workforce empowerment, to historical surveys, cultural advocacy, digital and humanitarian subjects, social research, and more.
Book design is a blend of visual representation and technical understanding. When I begin a concept for a cover, I work to understand more about the subject matter or what the book is communicating, and learn the needs of the author to visualize the overall aesthetic.
And speaking of covers, I always consider the whole book experience, from front to back and back to front. Back covers are just about as exciting as front covers to me (I love typography design), and I believe they should be an intriguing and exciting compliment to their front covers!
Design Software
Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign
Photography either provided by the client or sourced from UI Press stock images.
Book Covers
The first three covers below, I designed fully and are probably my favorites from my time at UI Press.
Though I was in charge of overall layout and design for the last three covers, they are examples of more author-dependent works in which the author provided a certain image they wanted displayed on the front (sometimes with guidelines and citation in respect to the image's use).
I had just begun learning about graphic design for data visualization and was excited to suggest a data visual idea for the cover of this fusion of data, arts, and social works (the authors were excited with the result as well!).
This was a new journal focusing on Olympic studies with future volumes to come. They did not have text ideas for the back cover, so I suggested including a table of contents as the fun back-cover experience!
When designing a cover, I think about its holistic visual impact. Not only for the author but for audiences picking up their books. I design with the back cover and spine in mind, knowing this experience encompasses the entirety of a three-dimensional object that someone will one day hold.
