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• DRIFT STUMBLE FALL •

A couple of months ago I was lucky enough to be commissioned to design and illustrate the new novel from M Jonathan Lee.

I'm really pleased with the resulting design and think it sits well on the shelves amongst it's competitors.

The road to arriving at this final look was an interesting one. Not least in that it was much shorter timescale than I would normally like, as this job came with a pressing deadline. Sometimes that kind of pressure can lead to a panicky creative block but fortunately in this case it helped me focus.

I'm including some of the early ideas that show how the concept was developed with the very helpful input and incisive feedback from Jonathan himself.

From the outset it was suggested that there might be a person in a window staring out after a bleak snowy downfall, so I felt this was a strong motif to experiment with. As you can see the figure featured in all of these early proofs. But it was this following, more graphic, layout that caught the authors eyer and eventually got pared down and led to the final cover design.

Too many houses and too much colour resulted in taking out all but the main two homes and the blank expanse then worked much better.

This design, above, became the 'almost' final chosen design until, we realised that a bleaker, colder blue tone to the snowy landscape would echo the mood of the story better.

So this, below, is the actual printed cover along with a detail and a selection of the marketing material produced to promote the book. Postcards, notecards, drip mats and tea bags. Pour yourself a cuppa and sit back and enjoy!