Process
These short story collections, centered around the struggles of working-class characters in 1980s America, are the finest examples of Carver’s “gritty realism”. For this project, I sought to encapsulate the raw ethos and restrained style of Carver’s writing within a unified set of updated book designs.
First Explorations
Beginning with the first collection, I created several rough photoshop composites featuring objects and settings from the book. I discovered different methods of arranging these objects and treating the layers to make the cover feel raw and gritty.
I eventually decided to strip things back and, rather than a full collage, select a handful of objects to highlight. The more maximalist experiments turned out to be distracting and didn’t compliment the quiet, restrained energy of the stories.
Solution
I used masks, color adjustment layers, and paper textures in Photoshop to create a small cluster of objects which appear like paper cutouts. These sit over a muted orange background, which strikes the right balance of energy and restraint. The endpaper spreads use a variation of this cover, with the objects blown up bigger and the color drained out further to look more like newspaper and contrast the color of the cover.
The title on the jacket uses the typeface Feneon, which mimics the contours of neon signs. Interesting but not overbearing, this choice meshes perfectly with the content of the book. The lush, organic Adobe Jenson handles the remaining text on the jacket to compliment the raw, grungy style of the cover.
I typeset the inner spreads with Adobe Caslon, a versatile combination of straightforward yet “literary” vibe with exceptional readability. Upon completing the first book, I simply extended the same approach to the other two collections, switching out colors and images while maintaining the same structure.