The Florida Keys Book Jacket
Project Details
Fall 2024
Book Jacket Design
Deliverables:
Book Jacket
Canvas Bag
Promotional Bookmark
Written by acclaimed novelist, short-story writer, and essayist Joy Williams, The Florida Keys: A History and Guide is by turns charming, acerbic, and bittersweet. Williams homes in on the Keys' history, eccentricities, and tourism industry, and how those forces intersect, often to the detriment of the area's ecology.
Research & Discovery
In keeping with the book's themes, my mood boards focus on tourism and its environmental impacts on local flora and fauna, like coral reefs and roseate spoonbills. Many of the images are from late 19th– and early 20th–century vintage postcards and scientific illustrations contemporary with the building of the Key West Railroad and the connection of the Keys to the mainland.
Sketches
In my sketches, I explored the book's themes using repeating patterns, grid layouts, and collages. I scoured the public domain for vintage Florida ephemera and scientific drawings of coral, birds, and sea creatures mentioned in the book. A color palette emerged naturally from this process.
Cover Roughs
Challenge
The greatest challenge in making this piece was matching the author's voice with the jacket design. Why would someone want to read a guide book that is 20 years out of date? The enduring appeal of this book is the author's unique voice, her wit, her point of view. We want to hear Joy Williams remind us of our own folly and to describe to us the Keys of yore, with all their shortcomings and their charms.
Ultimately, the sea turtle's expression best matched the author's tone, while its scale and weary eye contact draw the reader in. On the surface, the cover depicts a tranquil, pastel coral reef of the kind you might visit in the Keys. The reef itself and the sea turtle tie into the book in a deeper way, as they are both examples of the way coastal development and climate change endanger Florida's ecology.
Final Cover
I expanded the book cover collage to create a wrap-around tote bag design to be sold at library gift shops and book stores.
And, of course, any good book needs a promotional bookmark.
Reflection
This design succeeds because of the harmonious way that the colors, typography, and imagery all work together to communicate the themes of the book and the author's tone. Besides getting the tone right, one of the of the toughest parts of the design process was choosing a typeface for the title and integrating it into the illustration. I look forward to experimenting with new ways of combining type and collage on future projects.
Overall, I love this book, and it was a great pleasure to combine my interests in travel, literature, and collage together into one project.
*All copy used in this project belongs to Penguin Random House.
