Spat the Dummy

Much of the book takes place on the Plateau in Montreal, and I wanted to evoke the hand painted storefront windows of the area. The broken window hints at some of the roughness the protagonist both takes and dishes out.

Anvil Press

The Last Shot

This was my first book for Thomas Allen Publishers. A collection of short stories that had a central theme of last chances. The author was showing around the comps at a dinner party for friends, and apparently Michael Ondaatje was very enthusiastic about this matchbox concept.

Selected for inclusion in Quill and Quire‘s 2009′s Designer’s Choice Cover of the Year.

Thomas Allen Publishers

How to Be A Cowboy

As soon as I got the assignment for this one, I got a flash of Wile E. Coyote in the desert, poring over his various blueprints and diagrams with schemes to get the Road Runner. This was the first idea I executed, and the publisher liked it, but we continued down many different paths for a while before returning to this one. It’s almost exactly like the first comp I presented. Sometimes that’s the way it goes.

Gibbs Smith Publisher

Country Humour Series

Gibbs Smith asked me to redesign their  series of country humour titles. Using the Hatch Print Shop posters as inspiration, and with the help of the amazing Wood Type scans from withoutwalls.com, I put together fourteen covers for this series. With titles like Don’t Whiz on an Electric Fence, how could I not have fun?

Gibbs Smith Publisher

Archives and the Event of God

My second philosophy book of the year. This is about applying Foucault’s methods to the study of Philosophical Theology. I thought a photo of Foucault himself would be too concrete, but the idea of using a pair of glasses to represent his point of view rang true.

McGill-Queen’s University Press

The Master of Happy Endings

What could the link be between a ‘Happy Ending’ and a man jumping out of the building. That’s exactly what I hope someone glancing at this cover will wonder, and that curiosity will lead them to pick up the book. The photo in the background is printed black overlaid on silver.

Thomas Allen Publishers

The Extinction Club

The novel’s protagonist is a stamp collector, and the story has a thread about endangered and extinct species. I thought that a nod to the famous stamp with the upside down bi-plane would get across both ideas, with the upside down Cougar representing ‘extinction’. The stamp illustration is assembled from various stock photo and custom pieces, and was embossed on the final jacket.

Penguin Canada
Art Director: Lisa Jager

Wittgenstein And The Practice of Philosophy

I really wanted to use an unusual photo of Wittgenstein for this cover. With much detective work and help from The British Wittgenstein Society and the Wittgenstein Archive, I was able to find these evocative photo-booth style images. The multiple images spoke to me of Wittgenstein’s interest in language and philosophy.

Broadview Press
Photo: The Wittgenstein Archive

The Fixer and Other Stories

Sometimes I’m fortunate enough that Chris Oliveros at Drawn and Quarterly will come to me with cover projects. I did the design for the previous two Joe Sacco books published by D&Q: The Fixer and War’s End, which are now collected in this trade paperback. I wanted something that related to those previous books, but also had its own identity.

Drawn and Quarterly
Illustration: Joe Sacco

The Mystery of Everett Ruess

Everett Ruess travelled by horse and burro throughout the American southwest during the great depression, and in 1934 disappeared never to be seen again. This book is a collection of his correspondences with his family during his travels. It’s always a pleasure to work with ephemera, like the photo of Ruess.

Gibbs Smith Publisher

Lament for America

It’s always a pleasurable challenge to work with strong iconography. This book is a look at the decline of the US as a global superpower. The cover was printed in three colours — metallic green, overprinted with black, and spot red.

University of Toronto Higher Education

Death and Dying in Canada

The way the dead leaf curls alters the iconic shape of the Canadian maple leaf enough, but not so much that it’s not still recognizable. If I were to do this cover over (season permitting), I’d probably photograph a leaf myself rather than using stock.

Broadview Press

Achieving Student Success

After trolling through hundreds of ‘happy university student’ and ‘edgy university student’ stock photos, I gave up and did some pencil sketching. Thinking of things one would see on campus, the idea of the telephone pole and flyer with its tear-off tabs hit. Photographed right in front of my house.

McGill-Queen’s University Press
Photo: Michel Vrána