These spreads are from my final work at university in 2002. I wrote the text as my research dissertation – it's a script for a conversation between a print book and a digital book in a bar. The print book's depressed because everyone keeps telling him he's dying. The digital book is nervous he can't live up to expectations of the technophiles. They draw up a divorce settlement for information, each keeping what's most appropriate to their medium. I was really happy with this at the time, but it now seems a bit twee. Growth is good.
Around 2006 I started an online t-shirt business with my mate Ollie, called Brown Paper Tiger. 'Business' is a formal way of saying 'hobby': there's a lot more love than money involved, but I get a kick out of seeing people wearing my drawings. Purchase online here.
I was initially a bit nervous about the ridiculously long title of this book, so decided to make a feature of the type; I wanted something industrial but still fun (it's a funny book). I made the letters playing with a paper stencil on the photocopier, then layering them in Photoshop. Below, you can see how the J and K are each made with about four layers.
I had started making the font for another cover, but the killjoys in marketing wouldn't let me use it, so I played around with it a bit in a nonprofessional setting – see below, where I used it on the zine that accompanied an exhibition in 2005 called Girls Are Ugly When They Drink (the other photo is a shot of the exhibition space – most of the artwork was drawn on brown paper beer bags), before revisiting it when this cover came up.
Incidentally, it was supposed to be a two colour cover – the blue and purple are both metallic PMS colours (premixed inks, a bit like house paint, so you know you're getting an exact colour, commonly used for branding – think of the logo of a bank; the colour is always reproduced exactly the same ... Westpac red, Commonwealth yellow, ANZ blue). However, realise a metallic PMS is reflective, and therefore causes problems when the barcode is scanned (it reflects back into the scanner) so we had to add a third colour (a very dark blue) for the barcode. Oops. Now I know.
Self published book written and illustrated at university. Eugene loves books after they become an obsolete; people think he's perverted. I sold it in bookstores around Sydney and Melbourne for a while, but it was so difficult to invoice that I gave up and just give copies to people for their birthdays now.
www.curiousworks.com.au
A logotype for a Sydney production of Shakespeare's play, applied to all the promotional material.
Cover for Nicki Greenberg's graphic novel adaptation of The Great Gatsby. It's a beautiful thing, and clearly a labour of love. Nicki is currently working on an adaptation of Hamlet (where else do you go after Gatsby?) The cameo-illustrations on the cover and 'photographs' on the back cover are Nicki's artwork, from the graphic novel. I made the frame by cutting and pasting elements from an art deco source book. The colour palette, which continues on the endpapers and chapter openers, is based on peacock feathers – something I thought appropriate to the social frivolity of Gatsby's infamous parties.The image above is the hardback version of the book. A paperback version is scheduled for release in 2009, here is the revised cover below:
Full cover (gate-fold paperback) for young adult/adult novel. I used collage (turps release print, white pastel, pencil, pen and Photoshop) to create a slightly haunted look for this disturbing but beautiful story. Click on the image for a larger view. I was asked to design the first chapter to look distinct from the rest of the book – it was added after the manuscript had been edited, to introduce the Red Shoe story, which is read allowed in this introductory chapter and is an important allegory in the novel. I produced illustrations in the style of the fairytale books I had as a kid. I always liked the Red Shoe (despite the fact Karen gets her feet axed off at the end for coveting red shoes, a crime I'm absolutely guilty of):
I was also briefed to design a series of pages in the style of a 1950s newspaper, which are scattered through the book. The author supplied copies of the original newspaper articles, a few of them are collaged above on the endpapers (in red). I used them as visual reference and developed a template reminiscent of the layout. These news stories set the tone of the era and are generally grim and foreshadow the tragic climax.
'What helper monkeys do on their day off', for Moonrocks, a zine my friends Emily and John were compiling. Below: These giraffes didn't make it into Sundays (see 'exhibitions' link) but I thought they deserved their moment in the sun. The 'greenery' in the top on is made from "Hell Bank Notes" – decorative joss paper you can buy in Chinatown which I think is the best ephemera I've ever found.
I produced these bird illustrations for a group exhibition, Creature Feature, at Canvas Gallery in Surry Hills (Sydney), 2006. Collectively, they are called The Bluebird of Happiness' Lesser Known Cousins
Above: illustration for online magazine The Pages.
Some covers I designed & illustrated (in-house and freelance) for Allen & Unwin.
Cover and endpapers for a young adult novel (Random House). I somehow ended up in the niche of young adult fiction, which doesn't bother me at all. Generally, kids/young adult covers allow greater creative freedom with typography and illustration. Young adult fiction is often quite dark. Teenagers are quite dark, wallowing in all their hormones, so I guess this is unsurprising.
I used the flourish (made by pasting together a couple of printer's ornaments from a typeface) from the front cover and endpapers as a chapter dinkus in typesetting. I love a deep text indent.
The book is narrated by Sophie (shown on the cover writing in her diary) so we decided to include an extra title page (after the book title) as if it was actually Sophie's diary. The cats and puffin hang around in the story.
